The Forgotten Child
by OneforSorrowTwoforMirth
Summary: The Doctor's willingness to risk everything and everyone for the people he loves didn't start with Rose or Amy or Donna. He was a father once. And so he did a terrible thing to protect someone he loved. (mostly an OC story. if you like quirky British characters with amnesia, give it a shot!)
1. Chapter 1

AN END AND A BEGINNING

 _When the watch broke, so did everything else._

 _The watch was an unassuming, benign thing that she had kept near her without really knowing why. Sometimes it appeared in her dreams, but then slipped away once she woke. The watch simply was, it just existed in the background and always had._

 _When the watch broke, so did everything else._

 _All she could remember was bright, brilliant golden light tearing through her body, turning her inside out. Everything changing. Memories rent apart with a sound like ripping steel then the pieces melded together with new images, words, ideas that did not seem to be hers. No, they were wrong, all wrong, they belonged to someone else. Someone long dead and forgotten._

 _When the watch broke, so did everything else._

Jane Smith Parker lived a happy life, and if it hadn't been for the watch, she probably would have died as such too. Jane Parker was married to country doctor, Arnold Parker. They had met at school, Cambridge to be exact. Jane was among the few women who attended the university in the early turn of the century, and Arnold was one of the few men who did not dismiss her immediately as a silly girl who ought to have gotten married or taught primary school. So naturally, they fell in love and married though not until after the Great War which had been without a doubt the most unhappy time of Jane's life. But Arnold lived, even though he lost one of his eyes, he still could managed just fine as a doctor. The couple bought a cottage in Manchester and they never moved. The house was always full of flowers and books, and for a time held the voices and sounds of children who then grew up and found cottages of their own.

Yes, Jane was happy. Her husband was a well respected man in the surrounding hamlets and villages, the two of them had raised four children, and now with white hair and many wrinkles they could sit on their rocking chairs before the fire without a care. It wasn't until a stranger peddler came knocking that anything disturbed this blissful life.

The first time he came it was spring, and Jane bought some scissors. The second time he came was several weeks later, and Jane bought a few sewing needles. This time Arnold was home so she allowed the man to come in for a moment to warm himself from the bone chilling rain. He had seen the watch on the mantle and asked about it.

"An old thing," Jane said, "I've always had it…" In fact, she couldn't recall a time when she hadn't had it. It wasn't important, it was stuck so it couldn't open, but Jane felt a fondness for it so that she kept it nearby. It was small, with a dainty chain and very old fashioned but in a charming way. The peddler had asked if he might buy it from her, or trade it. He had displayed a very pretty silk scarf, and Jane was tempted. But no...the watch...she couldn't part with it.

"Why not, Jane?" Arnold had asked, "You've never even worn it!" Try as she might to rationalize the trade, Jane couldn't do it. She sent the peddler on his way.

Then two days later he was at the door again with several more fine objects, asking again for the watch. Again, Jane had to turn him away, but bought some ribbon to be polite. She told Arnold, and he just shrugged at what an oddly persistent man the peddler was and asked what was for supper.

Finally, that night, Jane heard something downstairs. She quietly rose, slipping on her dressing gown and stole into the parlor. The peddler stood at the mantle, his fingers caressing the patterns on the watch.

"What _are_ you doing?!"

The man simply smiled a horrible smile, as someone who knows a terrible secret. He held up the watch and swung it by the chain.

"Don't worry. You'll be so much happier when this is gone."

"I don't think I shall. I'll call the police!"

"Do as you like."

"Arnold!" She called, "Arnold!"

"You never wondered," the man said a bit incredulous, "Never wondered all those years why the watch didn't open? Never had it repaired? Never? Even when it nagged at the corner of your mind, even when you dreamed of flying faster than time?"

Now Jane was nervous. The man did not appear to be armed but something about his words made her deeply uneasy.

"Sir! Put down the watch and kindly sit on the sofa! Jane, call the police." Arnold emerged from their room armed with his pistol. The peddler laughed.

"You may have been a soldier once, old man, but those days are long gone." He took a step toward Jane.

"I will shoot you if you come any closer to my wife."

"You never wondered, Jane Smith, why all you can remember about your parents are their names and place of birth, but never their laughs or smiles or even their faces?"

"Sir, I order you!"

"You never wondered what it was that made you feel like you had forgotten to do something, forgotten something so very important? You never wondered-"

 _Bang_

The shot had been aimed at his shoulder, non-lethally, but Arnold's hands shook from age.

The shot instead struck the watch, shattering the casing and splintering the quartz face. The odds of the bullet hitting the watch were so small, and really, it should never of happened. But it did.

 _When the watch broke so did everything else._

As the watch fell to the ground, mangled and broken, it began to glow. The golden light came rushing out of the watch as if it had been anxiously waiting to be freed. It rushed at Jane, who screamed. Above her she heard a cry of concern from Arnold and a shout of rage from the peddler. Suddenly, in her head, were words she had never spoken _Gallifrey, Dalek, TARDIS,_ images of things she had never seen _asteroids, a small house, a box so much bigger on the inside,_ sounds she had never heard _whirring, screaming, roaring,_ and memories of places she had not been _The Shadow Proclamation, Skaro, Akhaten_.

She was dying, she knew it. The vortex of memories, words, cries, and time, so much time, all of time. It swirled in her mind, before her eyes, and it burned her. She felt the burning rise from her stomach, and reach up everywhere. She tried to clamp down on the sensation, keep it inside before it erupted.

She was dying.

Screaming in pain, she finally let go. Brilliant gold light streamed everywhere, it burned and seared, and she felt everything in her changing. Old memories and new splintered and fragmented then melded together becoming twisted and confused. She looked up desperately for Arnold but then suddenly realized that she didn't know who the man trying to reach her was.

Finally, the light stopped and she heard the man ask in an anguished voice,

"Who are you?"

"The Phoenix. I'm the Phoenix. And I've finally risen."

As she collapsed, a puff of gold escaped her lips.

Jesse Redmond watched from his bus stop as a little girl with big, curly red hair scratched the ears of one of the alley cats across the street. He was waiting for his usual ride from Chissick to London which he did once a week to his favorite bakery, without fail, despite any weather. He liked watching the people who passed. Despite the chilly day, the girl wore a short-sleeved white blouse with a Peter Pan collar and a blue pleated skirt that fell to her knees. She seemed to be talking to the cat, and scratched it under the chin. She looked up from the animal and her eyes met Jesse's and in that moment he caught the edge of something wonderful and new.

The girl looked back down at the cat, gave it a final rub on the head and skipped through the rain puddles toward him.

"Hello. Do you know what day it is? And what year? Actually, for that matter, where am I? Cats don't pay much attention, and she couldn't tell me much."

"Good morning, young lassie. It is March 23, 2010. You are in Chissick, England." He smiled.

"Oh! You actually answered! See, I've been asking people and they just laugh and say I'm very amusing and then don't answer! So I asked the cats, and of course they're no help, and the pigeons are even worse. Thank you! That helps me so much! What is your name?"

"Jesse. And what might yours be, you curious little lady?"

"I'm the Phoenix. It's nice to meet you, Jesse."

" _The_ Phoenix. Not just any old Phoenix, I see." He smiled and patted the seat next to him on the bench. "Now, Miss Phoenix, where are your parents? Do you live nearby?"

The girl scuffed the edge of her white patent leather Mary Jane against the pavement, "I got to be honest, I don't know, Mr. Jesse. See, the watch messed everything up. It's like I know all these things, I mean I know my name is the Phoenix, and I know that I'm a Time Lord, II know a broken watch scrambled my memory, and I know how to fly a TARDIS, well I mean I can sort of fly her. Not very well… but I know all those things, and so many on top of that but I can't for the life of me remember my parents, or if I've got brothers and sisters, or friends, or aunts or uncles, or even where I came from. I hardly know what a time lord is!"

Jesse had hardly followed this childish prattle, and asked again where her parents were.

"But can't you see! I don't know where they are! I just don't know!"

"Alright, alright, it's ok, how about we find them?" He soothed.

"Well where do we start?"

"We can go talk to the police but you'll have to give them your real name, dear."

"The Phoenix is my real name! And I don't think the police can help me, my mummy and daddy are awfully far away. I'll ask the TARDIS, I suppose."

"The who?" Jesse was really lost now.

"The TARDIS. She takes care of me." Jesse was getting a little worried. He could see the bus coming but he made no move to catch it. Another bus would be along. He wondered if he should call Child Services.

"So this TARDIS...is she your aunt? Your grandmother?"

"No!" the child laughed, "How about I show you?"

"I don't know…"

"She's close by." The girl took his hand in hers and pulled him across the street. "Come on!" She was impatient at how slow he walked and tugged his hand. They went down the alleyway and behind a building and there in the center was the strangest thing he'd ever seen. If it had been in the middle of a public square or on a main street, he'd have thought it some sort of modern art but in the back lot full of dumpsters and graffiti…

It was a sort of box, about as big as a telephone box but he'd never seen anything look less like a telephone box. The walls appeared to be a mosaic made of opaque stained glass with no particular design save one that looked like a pair of flaming wings across the front.

"Isn't she lovely?" The girl beamed, "She usually blends in but because we were so out of the way, I just let her stay like that. She likes that form." Jesse was too confused to say anything. Phoenix ran up to the box and hugged it as far as her arms would reach. She then pulled from under her shirt a long red string threaded through a key. "Want to come inside?" She put the key into a carefully disguised keyhole and opened the entire front panel. Jesse watched as she disappeared inside. Scratching his head, he stepped closer and peered in through the panel.

He stepped back, astonished.

"Isn't it brilliant?" Beamed the girl, sticking her head back out, "I wish I knew how it worked! But maybe that's the fun part! You can come in if you like." Jesse continued to back up, completely shocked.

"But...but it's- it's-"

"Bigger on the inside!"

"Who _are_ you?"

"I'm the Phoenix, I'm ninety years old and this is my TARDIS. We travel anywhere we like at any time we like and all I'm missing is a companion. I don't really know what companions do, but I remember they are very, very important." Phoenix smiled and flung open the panel door wide. "Care to come?"


	2. Chapter 2

INTERLUDE

 _In a rat-ridden, trash strew alleyway reeking of waste and gasoline slept a young brown-skinned boy thin as a straw. He tossed fitfully on the wooden pallet he'd made his bed for the night, so used to uncomfortable places that he could sleep anywhere but so accustomed to ridicule that he slept lightly, ready to spring away and run._

 _Despite his years of honed instinct, he did not hear a pair of soft feet coming closer to him until a shadow fell across the alleyway. The shadow's owner looked wildly out of place in the slums of Calcutta. She wore a blue scarf in her hair which looked to have been made in India, but then also jeans ripped like the poster for an American rockstar he'd seen in a gutter, a green sheer shirt, and a pattern of flames tattooed up her left arm which was paler than any woman he'd ever seen. The boy opened his eyes slightly, pretending to still sleep. The footsteps came closer, and he saw the dim outline of the woman kneel near him._

" _I know you are awake, Raj."_

 _Raj, for that was his name, flinched. How did she know?_

" _Raj. I have something important to tell you. You won't understand, not for a while, but when you do understand…" she paused and then gently placed a hand on his head. He flinched again but didn't fight it. "You're going to meet a girl. The strangest girl you've ever known. She's going to be innocent and happy and laugh a lot. But she's going to see the world for what it is one day, she's going to see too much of the darkness and the hate. You've already seen so much of that, Raj. But she hasn't, she doesn't know anything yet, she doesn't know how cruel and wicked the universe can be. She's going to find out, and it will break both of her hearts." The woman stopped for a moment and sighed._

" _Raj, she will love you. She will love you so much, and you don't have to love her back, but if you do- if you do love her back...love her with everything you have. Everything. For the time you have, just love her."_

 _The woman stood, and then left as softly as she came. As soon as her footsteps were gone, Raj sat bolt upright. He half followed the woman when he stumbled on a small bundle she must've left there. It was a new shirt wrapped around some foodstuffs and a small note that simply said,_

' _ **Til Next Time**_

VIEW FROM THE ROOM

It never changed much. The same neighbors, same cars, same dogs and their masters. Samantha Harrison watched them all come and go from the seclusion of her bedroom window, making up stories about them to pass the time. Her stories were probably far more interesting than their real lives. Stories so often are. Mrs. Mildred who was in her sixties walked to the grocery every Wednesday and Friday, and her visits were usually an hour and a half or more but she only ever came back with two paper sacks. Sammy couldn't believe it took her that long to walk two and a half blocks to buy two sacks of groceries so she made up that Mrs. Mildred and the grocer were in love and she spent that time with him when his wife wasn't at the shop. Mr. Withers was a middle aged man who had two children in primary school (Sammy thought them rather spoiled) and walked his dog every day almost as soon as his children got home. He usually wore a sweater vest and bow tie or some other rather hideous outfit, but he always had a funny looking lump in the back of his shirt so Sammy pretended it was a gun and he was a retired spy.

Her room was her favorite place to be, particularly when it was occupied by just her and her mother had let her close the door. It was simple, painted light grey, with white curtains and a pale pink bedspread and a bookshelf stuffed with books, trinkets, and art supplies. She kept her room neat, except for the desk which sat under the window and had piles of drawings, pencil shavings, pastels, paint brushes, and any other junk she didn't have a place for.

"Samantha, will you stop looking out the window and do your homework?" It was her mother. She didn't understand why Sammy looked out the window so much and really Sammy couldn't blame her. There wasn't much to see. She bustled over to Sammy's desk, straightening things and shifting piles. "What is this?" She held up a sketch. Sammy blushed and mumbled it was nothing then quickly came to the desk to move the pile of sketches underneath.

"It's just a drawing…"

"I love your drawings, honey, but this one just...it doesn't look like the others. Have you shown this to Doctor Dorr?" She adopted her kind, soft tone for when she mentioned Sammy's psychiatrist

"Why would I need to show it to her?" Sammy demanded, ruder than she'd intended.

"Because, I just thought maybe you should. It doesn't look like most of what you usually draw. What inspired you?"

"Just a dream I had…" Sammy mumbled.

"Was it a bad dream?"

 _Well, I don't have any other kind of dream,_ she thought to herself sarcastically then said aloud, "Maybe? I don't really remember. I'll show it to Dr. Dorr if it makes you happy."

"I'm not asking you to because it makes _me_ happy. I want you to be happy." She tousled Sammy's hair affectionately, then left her room. Sammy glanced at the sketch. It was a grotesque scene; the landscape desolate, full of gangling creatures with one enormous eye who skulked among dead trees and in the background was a small blue box. The image from her dream had been so seared into her mind that she felt she had to draw it to get it out. She stuffed it into her book, which was actually a box, where she kept all the sketches she didn't want her mother or Dr. Dorr to see. There were more than she cared to admit. They were images from her dreams, always with that blue box recurring. Sometimes she saw space ripping apart like a curtain, sometimes she saw stars exploding or dying. Sometimes it was wonderful, but most times it was terrible. Dr. Dorr said it was a side effect of people suffering from depression to have bad dreams but when she made the mistake of going into detail of a particular dream she had considered her very seriously and asked to speak with her mother at the end, which was never a good sign.

Since then she'd kept silent about her dreams, even though Dr. Dorr asked her a few times a month about them. She'd heard her parents whisper about "delusions" and "hallucinations." Sammy had always had trouble being "normal" and had seen Dr. Dorr since early teenage-hood even though she continued to deny there was a need for it.

Down the sidewalk, Sammy could see Mr. Collin who was an unusually handsome young man with such a frumpy sounding last name. He was wearing his typical long coat buttoned up past the collar, which made Sammy suspect he was much like her: trying to make his life more interesting by doing something silly and material to make himself more mysterious. After all, it is far more mysterious to walk down the street with one's coat collar turned and buttoned up than to walk like everyone else around. Sammy liked to walk about with her hood up even when it wasn't raining, or to wear fingerless gloves even when it was too cold. Behind Mr. Collin was a pair she'd never seen before. There was an old man in a rumpled jumper and jacket with very little hair and next to him a girl about ten years old in stature, though somehow looked younger in demeanor. She had unruly red hair, a very neat blouse and skirt, and she skipped wherever she went.

Strangers on the street were not uncommon, but something about these strangers gave Sammy pause. Then the little girl turned around and looked directly up at her. The girl waved, then tugged on the old man and pointed up. Sammy stopped frozen as he waved back too. Stiffly, Sammy waved to them. They both smiled at her, and finally Sammy broke away from the window and backed up against her door, heart pounding. Sammy tried the breathing tips Dr. Dorr had given her, but they didn't seem to work. After five minutes she calmed down.

 _It was only a little girl and her grandfather. Little kids see that kind of thing, people in windows. She was just being observant. Why are you so scared... nothing's wrong._

But something felt wrong. Something that prickled in the back of her mind and brought forth the images of a fanged stone angel, loud whirring machines, alien eyes and a blue box from her dreams.

 _A blue skirt, the girl was wearing a blue skirt the same color as the box that's all. And it's not an uncommon blue, so don't worry so much about it. Just a color association, like how sound association works._

Rationalizing with facts rarely helped, but she tried anyway. She turned her attention to the maths sheet she was supposed to be completing and fell into the rhythm of sums and algebra, banishing the blue box by finding b+c and all of the letters which really shouldn't be mixed together with numerals. It distracted her. Sometimes, Sammy felt she was living from one distraction to the next. She didn't like it, but that was really all she could do.

One week later, Algebra was just no longer distracting enough. Sammy woke in a hospital bed with a heart rate monitor clipped to her finger. Her mother sat in the corner and her father was pacing outside in the hall. Sammy didn't move, and looked up the ceiling.

 _What did I do this time?_

It wasn't her first trip to the hospital. She'd had three episodes previously bad enough to get her sent here. The funny part was she hardly remembered them, or at least she hardly remembered what she had done. It was like having a daydream, but a nightmarish one. The dreams became so real to her that the rationale telling her they were just dreams was overpowered for a few minutes by the sheer terror she felt. Dr. Dorr called them hallucinations, which was probably more accurate, but Sammy called them Daymares.

She felt exhausted. As Dr. Dorr continued to say, everything psychological is simultaneously biological. It must've been a bad one, Sammy felt limp and completely drained, head throbbing. She really tried to think about what had happened but she couldn't remember. She could vaguely remember voices and conversations but wondered if any of them were real or if they were just blended in with her dreams. Sometimes dreams, memories, and reality became a sort of watery soup in her mind, sloshing all together and mushing into one congealing blob that drove her near mad. Sammy quickly closed her eyes before anyone noticed she was awake. She didn't feel like talking to anyone.


	3. Chapter 3

SMALLER ON THE OUTSIDE

Jesse had been duly shocked when he entered Phoenix's TARDIS. She beamed happily as he spent twenty minutes going in and out, wide eyed and speechless. Aside from it being "smaller on the outside" (it made more sense to him to say that instead of bigger on the inside, like Phoenix) the interior was so completely strange and alien-looking he couldn't stop staring.

"Where did you find it?"

"In the woods. She'd always been there but...I'd lost her. She was waiting for me, because she's a real good friend."

"She?"

"Yes, she. She thinks that most for sure." Jesse walked around the big round console and felt the levers and gears.

"But what _is_ it?" He finally asked.

"A TARDIS. That stands for something, but I don't know what. But she's a time machine." The console lit up. "Oh she likes you!" Phoenix giggled and skipped around the control room. "And there's even more places to go in here! There's a kitchen that way, and a library two doors down, and for some reason there's an enormous room full of soap bubbles all the time. Oh and a candy closet, but the TARDIS locks me out if I eat too much! And there's six bedrooms with their own bathrooms so I can let you have one of those!"

"So...so you live here?"

"Yes! Well I travel mostly like I said but I don't even know where I want to go but I know there's so many places to see! But we will have to sleep first." She ran under the console where there was a small hammock with a comforter and pillow draped across it. Phoenix hopped in and disappeared in the blankets.

"Um…" Jesse stood, not knowing what to do, "Where do I go?"

"Oh! Right!" She hopped out of bed and pulled him down a corridor. "This can be your room."

The room was simple, with a single bed made up with red sheets and a lamp giving soft light. In the corner there was an old radio and a few other relics that looked like they came out of Jesse's childhood: a red radio flyer wagon, a Raggedy Ann doll, and a toy doctor's kit. It looked like the room had been waiting for him, like the box knew he was coming. This did not put him at ease.

"Is this alright?" she asked anxiously.

"Oh, yes, thank you, this is very nice."

"Good! I will see you in the morning!" she took off down the hall again. Jesse stared for a moment then sat down heavily. What was he doing? He was in a box that had a bedroom and control room from the future with a little girl who looked to be seven or eight and now he was agreeing to travel through time?

 _Maybe I'll wake up and it'll just be those newfangled pills acting up…_

As it happened, it was not his pills and when Jesse woke up and ventured into the hall he found the strange buzzing control room and small red haired child curled up in her hammock. He crossed to the door, and opened the sliding panel.

Then shouted in surprise.

He was looking out into space.

Just a step away was the edge of the box and then a straight drop into nothing...and around him he could see stars, and colored dust, and an awesome silence that caused his shout to turn to a gasp.

Phoenix woke at this and tumbled out of her hammock, still wearing her clothes from the day before. She grinned a bit sleepily when she saw Jesse's dumbfounded look. She pushed her curly hair out of her eyes.

"Isn't it amazing?" Jesse was entirely too stunned to answer. "It's so still and so BIG!" Phoenix came up to join him and took his hand. "I know, it's a lot to see at once." So they stood there at the edge of the TARDIS, drifting through space, watching the stars and glimpsing into the pockets of nebulas and stardust. Finally, Jesse looked down at her.

"You are the most...the most impossible child I have ever met."

"Is that good?"

"It's very good." He squeezed her hand. She smiled wider and spontaneously hugged him, nearly knocking him into a particularly bright patch of space matter.

"Will you be my companion?"

"What does that mean exactly?"

"You know, I don't know. I just know it's important. And I don't like traveling alone." The TARDIS buzzed and lit up, "Well, I'm not alone but the TARDIS can't talk, much as she tries."

"Where will we go?"

"Anywhere and anywhen."

"Anywhen?"

"That's the word that's been in my head for so long. Anywhen. I don't remember who said it to me first. And the best part is I don't even know what it means! So let's find out just what Anywhen is!" With that, she closed the TARDIS door and spun some spiky knob on the controls.

It took several tries before Phoenix landed where she had wanted to go. It was probably so hard because she hadn't the faintest idea where it was she wanted to go, only a vague picture in her head and feeling that whatever place it was, she'd like to visit again. She kept ending up in an asteroid field that didn't register on the TARDIS' system. After some childish complaining and kicking of the console, she tried again.

"It's so hard!" She exclaimed, running around trying to fix and maneuver the controls, "I can't be everywhere at once!" Jesse tried to help but discovered that it only made everything worse. Phoenix appreciated his help but it only landed them in 1984 which was not nearly as interesting as Orwell's account. Finally, they managed to land where they wanted to be.

"Where are we?"

"The Andromeda Galaxy!" Phoenix beamed. "It's so beautiful to look at."

"You say that like you've seen it before, little one." Jesse was puzzled. Phoenix knitted her brow.

"I do...but I don't remember if I have…" She opened the door of the TARDIS and looked at the stars below and above. "I can't remember!" Jesse stood next to her.

"Phoenix, I think I've decided this isn't a dream now and there's a lot of things I would like to know the answer to."

"Oh you shouldn't ask me for answers. I probably won't have any. I don't know how the TARDIS works, or where she came from. I don't know how I know how to fly her, and I don't know where the watch came from."

"Er….watch? No, I mean- I don't need to know all of those things, but Phoenix, where did _you_ come from? Where is your family? And aren't they worried about you?" Phoenix sat down on the edge of the TARDIS and said nothing. Jesse sat beside her. "Phoenix?"

"I don't know." She whispered, sounding scared, "I don't know because I don't remember."

 _Laughter, a blue blanket, a kind face_

"You don't remember who your family is?"

 _Safe. Warm. Loved._

"No. I don't know- I mean I know but I don't remember…"

 _A gentle hand. Tears. So many tears. Hearts skipping a beat._

"Alright, well maybe we can find them."

" _I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry, little one. I love you, I promise I love you…"_

"Yes," Phoenix looked up at Jesse with sparkling eyes. "Maybe."

 _I love you._

 _I promise I love you._

"I know memories can be a confusing things," Jesse smiled kindly, "And I know losing them is scary. But don't worry." He patted her shoulder and Phoenix beamed. "Do you have anything we could start with, like a clue?" She thought for a moment then reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out a pocket watch. The two pieces which were supposed to snap shut hung on by a thread at the hinge, the face completely shattered. The two intricate hands were stopped a second before midnight.

"The time used to be 11:55. I know that. But after it broke...well, so did everything else. I don't want the hands to ever go to midnight."

"What's so important about the watch? You've mentioned it a few times."

"I think...I think it was given to me by my parents. Or someone like that who loved me."

"Alright. Its a good idea to start with someone who loves you. Now tell me, what do you last remember before this watch broke?"

"Rain. And a man...a man who said something...said a name I think. Maybe it was my name. I don't know. But then its just...fire. And changing. And running. An awful lot of running." Phoenix looked dully down at the watch and had a sudden urge to throw it into the nearest patch of stardust.

"Well that gives us a starting place." Jesse patted her on the shoulder and smiled, "Chin up."


	4. Chapter 4

A BOX OF MEMORIES:

"I don't understand what these are!" Phoenix finally exclaimed. She was sitting on the floor of the TARDIS holding something she'd found under the console.

"What's that?" Asked Jesse, sticking his head out of the kitchen. He'd taken over all things culinary, since Phoenix hadn't a clue how to cook and would eat most things unprepared when she was hungry, like eggs and pasta.

"This box! It wasn't there yesterday" Phoenix brandished a plain blue box, "Sometimes the TARDIS sends things up from other rooms that are important but this was never on the TARDIS. I know I didn't bring it. Look at all these pictures!" She held up a handful of polaroid snapshots. Jesse threw the dish towel over his shoulder and came closer. The first several photos were of the inside of the TARDIS. Another was of an alien landscape and what looked like a large spaceship. In a third, an elderly human couple shared an armchair and smiled at each other rather than the camera with a small dog next to them.

"Wait a minute...that's me!" Jesse exclaimed, "That's me sitting on the chair there!" Phoenix looked over.

"You're right! But...who is she?"

"I have no idea...I haven't been married in years." He stared at the picture, "How did this get here?" Phoenix looked at the timestamp.

"It hasn't been taken yet."

"What?"

"This picture was taken on January 1st 2016."

"But...it's 2010, how is that possible?"

"Well I guess someone took the picture and then came back in time to put it here." Phoenix shrugged. She looked at the last picture in her hand. It showed a shy looking girl with long blonde hair hanging around her face, a bit unkempt. She wore black jeans and a black t-shirt with a blue flannel over it, the sleeves going past her hands and purple Chucks on her feet. Written in red ink on the side of the photo was the name _Sammy_ and an address for somewhere in London. Then at the bottom it said,

 _Find her next :)_

"I think I know where we are going now, Jesse."

"Oh? Did you decide? That planet made of diamond sounded promising."

"We're going to London in 2014. There's someone we need to find.

SOME ARE CURSED TO REMEMBER:

Sammy sat in the lobby of the hospital in a sweater much too big for her and a hat pulled low over her eyes. She'd left her room, something she was strictly not allowed to do because of her "delicate health" and stress and whatever other mental conditions attached to her diagnosis. She didn't want to leave, because she had nowhere really to go but then she didn't want to stay in her room so she settled for sitting in the lobby for as long as she could until they found her. Sammy gazed vacantly out the window, thinking about the dream she had had the night before. The blue box had been there, and out of it had come the oldest creature she'd ever seen. The rest of the dream was scrambled into colors and images she couldn't put together. But she'd had another dream unlike the others where a star exploded into a shower of colors and formed a bird from the flames, and out of it stepped Hope.

How Sammy had dreamed up the concept of Hope and how exactly it had "stepped out" of an exploding star was beyond her. It wasn't something she could explain in words, nor something she could even fully see in her mind's eye. But she'd known that whatever had come from the explosion was Hope.

"Are you Sammy?"

Sammy looked up, startled. A little girl stood squarely in front of her. Behind her stood an apologetic looking elderly man.

"Are you Sammy?" She repeats.

"Y-yes?"

"I'm the Phoenix and it is a pleasure to meet you!" The girl beamed and tugged the man forward, "This is Jesse. He's my companion."

"Oh...um, hi?"

"Excuse her, she comes on a bit strong. I'm Jesse, as she said. Pleased to meet you."

"Wait- I know you!" Sammy said, sitting up suddenly, "You- I saw you out my window! You waved to me!" They were even wearing the same clothes.

"Did we?" Jesse looked confused.

"So are you coming?" The girl asked quickly.

"Am I...what?"

"Coming. To travel with us through all time and space."

"Excuse me?"

"Like I said, she comes on a bit strong," Jesse sighed, "Phoenix we talked about this. In this time, no one knows how to time travel. So you have to explain slowly." Before Phoenix could launch into her very complicated and rambling explanation of time travel, a doctor recognized Sammy.

"Excuse me, but are you relatives of Miss Samantha?" He asked, politely. Jesse began to say no but Phoenix rushed over him.

"Yes, I'm her cousin and this is her grandpa!" The doctor looked surprised and a bit skeptical but finally after a few more words from Phoenix, moved on. Sammy looked at the girl quizzically.

"Who are you?"

"I told you, I'm the Phoenix."

"Oh. I'm sorry, that doesn't mean much to me."

"I'm a time lord. Does that help?"

"A...a time lord?" Sammy suddenly sat up.

"Yes! You've heard of us?"

"Yes...yes I have." Sammy reached into her pocket for her notebook.

"Really?" Jesse was surprised, "Because I've been with her for at least a week and I hardly understand any of what she says." Sammy fumbled with her pocket-sized notebook and opened it up to the List.

"Do you know what any of these mean?" It was a list of words.

 **Tardis**

 **Gallifray**

 **OOD**

 **The Cracks**

 **Regenerate**

 **The vortex**

"You spelled Gallifrey wrong," Phoenix pointed out, "It's -ey not -ay."

"But...I mean what IS Gallifrey?"

"It's a planet. And I can show you what a TARDIS is, because I've got one!"

"Wait...where did you get these words? I've heard Phoenix here mention them but how in blazes do you know?" Jesse demanded. Sammy blushed.

"I hear them. In my dreams. I write down words I hear...and draw the things I see."

"Ooo! Can I see?" Phoenix leaned in close. Sammy turned the pages to show her several pages of interlocking and overlapping circles and dots that almost looked like gears. Phoenix gently ran her hand over the markings.

"This is a language."

"What? What language?"

"I don't know...I can read it, but not very well." She turned the page to the detailed sketch of a blue police box which was set against the background of stars and planets.

"Phoenix...are you crying?" Jesse suddenly noticed the girl's eyes had filled with tears and she stared down, shocked at the sketch. Phoenix felt her cheeks as a tear rolled down.

"That's funny...I've never done this before. Am I leaking? Does this mean I'm sick?"

"No. It means you're sad," Jesse said gently and Sammy closed her book.

"Oh. That's a human emotion, I think. Why am I so sad, Jesse?"

"I don't know, dear. You'd have to tell me."

"What is that box, Sammy?" Phoenix asked, turning her wet face to Sammy who looked unsure what to do.

"It's just what I see in my dreams. It's always there, flying or appearing or disappearing. I don't know except that there's always a man nearby, but it's a different man every time so I don't know…"

"We need to find that box," Phoenix declared and crossed her arms.

"Alright, we can try to find the box," Jesse patted her shoulder.

"What do you mean? What- you people are so crazy _I_ feel sane around you! You treat this box like it's actually real, like it's really flying around in space or something." Sammy seemed to realize that they'd spend the last several minutes talking about what she only ever spoke of in therapy sessions, where everyone told her she was just dreaming.

"Yes. It is. Probably. And I know that it's very very important that we find it! So will you come?"

"Only if you're sure," Jesse added, "The way we travel is not for the narrow of mind."

"I guess...I guess. I don't know how you think you'll travel to the stars but…" She stood up and Phoenix took her by the hand.

"But first we need to go back and wave at you in your window. Can't mess up the timeline. When did you say that was? Come on, Sammy! I can tell you're going to be brilliant! "


	5. Chapter 5

Bit of a longer upload, but I had some time this weekend and I was excited to introduce one of my favorite characters!

OTHERS ARE CURSED TO FORGET

Karmen couldn't remember how she'd gotten there or when, and certainly not who had put her there. Actually, wherever "there" was was also unclear. And to make matters completely confusing, she couldn't much remember where she had come FROM before this place. Surprisingly, this didn't alarm her overmuch. All she really noticed was that she was ravenously hungry. Karmen stood and looked about her. The hall was about five feet wide and twelve feet tall, the walls made of stone and bare of anything. The floor was covered in several inches of dust and chunks of rock. Karmen carefully picked her way down the hall. Some parts of the walls had scratches and dents in them which made her shudder involuntarily.

"Hello?" Of course, there was no answer. Karmen kept going, and nothing changed. The hallway forked, so Karmen took the right fork. This happened several times and the dust seemed to get thicker. She spotted a few chunks that looked like they had been part of a statue. She knelt down and began stirring the dust at her feet trying to find the floor. It was the same stone as the rest of the maze, so she sat down and stared up at the ceiling, wishing she had some food.

How long _had_ she been here? Somehow she felt like she'd done this before, this wandering through dusty and rocky halls, but it wasn't connected with any memories or anything other than a vague feeling. The lack of any kind of knowledge didn't frighten her. It just aroused a faint sense of unease she could ignore. Eventually, she got up and kept wandering. Across the wall on the left fork ahead of her, someone had scratched a message. She looked at it, reading out

IT WAS THE ANGELS

Karmen had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but it sent another chill down her spine. She hadn't put that message there, so she wasn't the first person to be stuck down here. She'd wandered enough of the place to conclude there was no one else there, but then again...perhaps there were bodies. And, as she thought further, she had really no idea just how big this maze was. It could go for miles and miles potentially. This thought really did disturb her and she quickened her pace.

 _Well, I guess I just hope I don't see whatever these angels are…_

When the TARDIS next materialized, it was on a barren and rocky planet or moon. Phoenix wasn't sure which. She poked out her head of the door and glanced down. The TARDIS was somewhat precariously parked on the edge of a deep fissure in the planet's surface.

"Where are we?" Sammy urgently looked out behind her. It had taken her much less time to adjust to a box smaller on the outside and travel through space and time. Jesse had mused over this during their trip.

 _I'm too old and set in my ways...never understand anything modern and newfangled. Suppose I'll have to try harder to keep up with these kids._

"I don't know exactly...it's a moon very far away. No galaxy I've been to before. I wonder what's down there…" Phoenix leaned dangerously far over the chasm, causing Jesse to put a firm hand on her collar. "The TARDIS hasn't found any life signs, so I don't understand why she brought us here."

"I thought you brought us here?" Sammy looked a little alarmed, "What do you mean the TARDIS brought us here?"

"Oh. See, I just sort of make suggestions."

"What?"

"I can't properly fly her, you know. You have to be at least two hundred to take the flying test. Or is it a hundred and fifty?"

"WHAT?"

"Funny thing, though. I sort of know how to fly her even though no one ever taught me. I suppose she teaches me. I say where I want to go, sort of steer her and she takes me where we need to go."

"What do you mean, Phoenix?" Jesse asked.

"Well, when she landed me next to your bus station I had been trying to find my parents but I guess she thought I needed you more." Phoenix shrugged and deftly jumped over the fissure. "Come on then!" She motioned. Sammy looked very apprehensive and Jesse doubted his knees could make it over that gap. After a moment's internal struggle, Sammy jumped over to join Phoenix.

"I don't know…" Jesse looked down.

"Come on, Jesse! I'm older than you!"

"I still don't understand how you rationalize that." He jumped, his knees buckling as he landed. Sammy and Phoenix helped him up.

"There's a door this way!" Phoenix ran ahead, her white shoes soon grey with dust.

"Is she crazy or something?" Sammy asked Jesse, "I mean...she's what, seven or eight? And whoever is in charge of her just lets her run around with a time machine and jump over canyons and all that? I mean, who is she?"

Jesse just shrugged, "Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is she is impossible and important and I can't help myself but follow her." And he went to help Phoenix open the door. Really, it was more of a sewer grate and made of something that resembled iron. A few minutes of struggle made it clear that the "door" could not be opened with mere human hands. Phoenix hmmed and circled it a few times then fumbled in her skirt pocket. She pulled out a small object which seemed to hum with energy. For a moment, Sammy thought it was a blue crayon but there were several buttons and the end was glowing white.

"What is that?"

"I don't know. It was on the TARDIS console when I went in the first time. But it helped me open a few doors before, so maybe it can open this one?" She pointed it at the grate and pressed a button.

Nothing happened. She tried a different button and still nothing. She smacked it with her palm and began fidgeting with the settings. Finally, she pointed it and the lock clicked.

"Ha! And even better, there's stairs! Well, I mean a ladder. Actually it's more like footholds." Phoenix looked down the hole and lowered herself to the first hold on the wall.

"Wait- what if it's dangerous or something?"

"Then I'll turn around and come back out. I just want to see if there's anything down there."

"Then- then I'd better come with you." Sammy hastily tied her sweatshirt around her waist.

"I think I'll stay here," Jesse said, "I'm much too old to be rock climbing down into a strange planet's center."

"Alright, Jesse. Here!" She tossed him a random piece of candy from her pocket (she always had candy in those) and then her bushy head disappeared. Sammy gave him a slightly apologetic look then followed.

It took far less time than anticipated to crawl down into the chasm. In fact, as Phoenix looked back up she couldn't understand how they had descended approximately five hundred feet in the span of only two minutes.

"What do you see?" Called Jesse, his voice faint and barely audible.

"Just...dust. A lot of dust and rocks. Rubble. Oh I like that word, rubble. Rubble, rubble rubble!" Phoenix giggled and skipped ahead. She heard Sammy gasp behind her. "What?"

"Oh, it's nothing. Just that there's a statue of an angel back there." Phoenix looked behind her and indeed there was a stone angel with small wings and curiously confused look on her face with one hand up and the other out as if in the act of calling for help.

"Huh…" Phoenix walked closer, curious, and something very faint seemed to wake in the back of her mind. Almost as if… "Well, let's keep going. Maybe there's more. Maybe this is some kind of statue cavern!"

Neither girl saw the angel move as soon as their backs were turned. Neither saw the stone melt away or heard the angel gasping as she stumbled to the ground.

Phoenix and Sammy wandered the maze-like halls, still finding nothing but rubble and dust.

"You know...it's funny but I feel like we're going in circles," Phoenix said suddenly.

"Well even if we are, how could anyone tell?" Sammy pointed out. All the halls looked the same. Sammy turned around, "Hey. It's another angel statue." Phoenix turned to look as well.

"Oh! Well it looks the exact same only...only it's in a different position. So I guess we aren't going in circles. Let's keep going!" Sammy kept staring at the statue. Something about it unnerved her. It almost seemed like it was trying to speak. A few hundred yards ahead they saw a cryptic message scratched into the wall.

IT WAS THE ANGELS

"I think that might be a cue to leave…" Sammy muttered. Phoenix didn't seem interested in leaving yet. She began fiddling with the short stubby stick and pointing it at the walls and floor.

"No! I don't want to know the makeup of the stone, I want to know how old it is! No stop that," she smacked the contraption against her palm and pointed it again, "Whoa. This inscription is nearly two hundred years old."

"What is that thing?"

"It's a crayon."

"Umm...no I'm pretty sure that's not a crayon. It's got buttons and makes weird noises. Crayons are sticks of wax."

"Then it's a fancy crayon." Phoenix continued to study the wall, "This is so curious."

"Phoenix, we should go."

"Why?"

"Well there's a creepy inscription on the wall in an empty maze of stone with some angel statues. Generally, in movies there's a killer creeping up behind us right about now and I really don't want to wait around to find out!" Sammy glanced behind them again and jumped back startled. "Phoenix...the statue, it wasn't there a second ago." Phoenix turned around.

"Oh...so is it following us?"

The statue was now in a position that made it appear as if it was trying to run, arms stretched out.

"Statues can't move…" Sammy started to say but stopped, remembering that they were standing on a different planet they had come to via a giant colorful box that could apparently travel through time as well. "Are they dangerous?"

"Moving statues? I don't know, I've never met any." Phoenix slowly came closer, trying to scan the statue but whatever she was trying to do wasn't working. She poked the statue with her toe. Nothing happened. She poked it with her hand, on the shoulder. Phoenix turned back to Sammy. "She seems to just be a very statue-y statue." Sammy looked back and screamed.

The statue had moved again. Not very far, but her arms were definitely in a different position now. Phoenix whirled and gasped.

"Ok, I think I'll take that back. She's a not very statue-y statue."

"I didn't even see her move," Sammy babbled, "It was like one second she was like that then the next she'd changed."

Phoenix moved forward, slower this time, and kept pointing her device at it. She changed the settings, tweaked the front and then-

"Can't you hear me?"

Sammy and Phoenix both looked around, startled.

"Who's that?" Phoenix asked.

"You're looking at me, of course!" The voice said again. It was a girl's voice who sounded older than Phoenix but younger than Sammy.

"I'm not looking at anything but an angel statue," Phoenix said, confused.

"What angel statue?"

"If you're in the same room as us, why can't you see it?" Sammy demanded.

"I-I don't know. Sorry, I can't move. I don't know why but I can't move. My legs and arms are too heavy. I can't move them. I can't even move my eyes, but I'm looking right at you." Sammy and Phoenix both turned around, looking for the source of the voice. "Oh, now I can move." They both whirled back around and the angel statue was frozen again, "Hey! I don't know why…"

"Umm...what's your name? Who are you?" Phoenix asked.

"Karmen. My name's Karmen. Do you know where we are?"

"No, not really. It seems to be some kind of maze. But I think I know how to get out."

"Oh, that's good. I'm really really hungry."

"How long have you been here, Karmen?" Sammy asked.

"I don't know...doesn't seem too long though. A few hours?"

"Karmen, are you absolutely sure you're not an angel?" Phoenix asked again, "Because, I can hear you and my crayon says that you are in here but...but the only other thing in this room is that angel."

"I'm a girl, silly!" Karmen said, a little confused. Phoenix took a few steps closer to the statue.

"Karmen, am I coming closer to you?"

"Yes…"

Phoenix laid a hand on the statue's arm. "Now what am I doing?"

"You're...you're touching my arm."

"No, Karmen. I'm touching the statue's arm." There was silence for a few seconds.

"What? But...but you're touching me. That's my arm! I can't move it, but you are touching it!" Sammy and Phoenix looked at each other, concerned.

"So, Sammy and I, we are going to turn away from you. And see if you can move if we do that. Just move to the other side of the room." Slowly, Sammy turned her back, as did Phoenix.

"I'm on the left side." They turned, and indeed the statue was on the left side of the room, her arms crossed.

"Karmen...Karmen I'm sorry to tell you but you are the angel statue."

"That's impossible! I'm Karmen, I'm a girl!" The voice sounded genuinely shocked and now frightened. Sammy tried,

"Karmen, when did you come here? And where did you come from?" There was a long silence.

"I...I don't know. I don't know when I came, or where from I just know that I'm here and my name is Karmen!" The girl's voice was now truly frightened.

"It's ok, don't be scared," Phoenix said softly, "I remember when I woke up and I didn't know where I was or who I was or anything. It's a little scary. Memories are scary. But it'll be ok. We can help you! Maybe the TARDIS can help you!" Phoenix gently took the statue's hand and patted her head. "I need to mess with my crayon a little more, but I think I can make your voice work again." While Phoenix fiddled with the device, Sammy looked closely at the angel. She felt her wings.

"Did you know you had wings, Karmen?"

"N-no I didn't. I do? I can't feel them…"

"Karmen, I think we had better take you to the TARDIS. Come on, let's get out of here."

"But how?" Karmen said somewhat despairingly, "There isn't a way out."

"Well if there's a way in, there's always a way out. We just have to find our way back." They walked back they way they came but soon Sammy seemed to notice that none of the turns they had taken on the way there were the same on the way back. Phoenix started to notice this as well.

"I think the maze changes itself."

"So the maze is alive too?!" Sammy exclaimed.

"No, just being powered by something...maybe we ought to try to figure out what's controlling it." Phoenix felt the wall, then pointed her crayon at it. There was a vibration then a small panel slid open. "That's clever. It's not really stone...it's metal with stone on top." Inside the panel was a tunnel barely big enough for someone Phoenix's size and small lights blinking all over it.

"Should we go in?" Kamen asked cautiously. Sammy felt nervous, knowing the girl was right behind her but if she looked back there'd only be a statue.

"I'm not going in," Sammy declared, "I hate small spaces."

"Alright. Karmen you can come with me," Phoenix said. A split second later, the statue appeared in front of Sammy. Sammy blinked. How had she moved that fast?

"Do you mind closing your eyes for a second?" Karmen asked. Sammy complied and when she opened them, both Phoenix and Karmen had vanished into the hole.

The walls of the maze seemed rather unremarkable, until they stumbled into what must be the heart of the maze. A massive console sat in the middle of a cavern which must've been fifty feet high.

"What is that?" Karmen asked.

"I don't know...but it feels wrong."

"I don't like it either…" Something about it drew Karmen to it, it seemed to offer to satisfy her hunger. Which of course made no sense because there wasn't any food in sight.

"Can't you hear it?"

"Hear what?" Karmen asked, trying to move closer without going in Phoenix's line of sight.

"There's something in here, something that's speaking, calling out!"

Karmen was puzzled and asked, "What's it saying?"

"It's asking for help!" Phoenix was suddenly alarmed and rushed up to the console, "It's being hurt- twisted out of shape!"

"What is?" Karmen asked again, more alarmed.

"Time!"

"Time?"

"Yes! Time! It's being used wrong! Bent to do things it shouldn't do!" She tapped the console, which then lit up covered in complicated green and blue lines. They snaked all over the surface of the console, in irregular and unfamiliar patterns.

"What...what is it doing?"

Phoenix suddenly turned back to Karmen. "Karmen, how long have you been here?"

"Stop looking at me! I can't move!"

"I know, but just answer. How long have you been here?"

"I don't know, remember? I don't know!" Karmen really was afraid now. Something felt wrong, so very very wrong. She heard a crack near her left hand. Something _plinked_ to the ground. "What was that?"

"Umm...that was your finger?"

"My...finger?" Karmen tried to look down but couldn't.

"And...your nose is crumbling. Your stone…it's getting all worn out and smooth!"

"What's happening?!" Karmen wanted to look, wanted to move. After a few seconds she was able to look down, but was soon stuck there again. Horrified, she saw that Phoenix was right. She was...rotting. Falling apart. Aging.

"Karmen, it's going to be ok. I think I know what we need to do."

"Phoenix girl, I'm scared."

"It's the time. The time being all bent out of shape! It's being used to do this to you. It's being used to speed up your timeline! It's starving you of all your time energy!"

"But why isn't it hurting you?"

"Oh...maybe because we aren't the same species?" Phoenix stopped to ponder this for a moment.

"How do we stop it?" Karmen gasped, the hunger pangs in her stomach almost crippled her. Phoenix must not have been looking at her because she was able to double over.

"I need to un-bend the time. Un-twist it." Phoenix placed her hands on the console, "Hello there. I'm the Phoenix."

"Are you _talking_ to the colorful lines?!"

"Yes, don't be mean to them. Hello there. I know you're trapped, and maybe I can un-trap you. Do you know of anything I can do?" She kept moving her hands along the lines. Then she looked up. "Well, there's only one thing you can do to a prison."

"What's that?"

"Break it. Karmen, you stay here. I need to go find something to crack this prison open."


	6. Chapter 6

A NEW KIND OF COMPANION

Phoenix returned with a large chunk of rock, presumably from the maze outside the console room. Karmen felt increasingly weak, she was lying on the ground now gasping for breath. Phoenix saw this and hurried to her.

"It's alright, Karmen. I'm going to break the time free and so it'll give your time back!" Phoenix crossed to the opposite side of the room, then charged at the console with the rock raised over her head.

 _Smash_

The resulting reaction was such that Phoenix flew back several feet and shattered glass flew everywhere. The console blazed then the room lit up brilliant blue and Phoenix wrapped her arms around her head and squeezed her eyes shut.

When she opened them, she realized she was back in the maze where she'd opened the panel. Except the panel wasn't there anymore. Sammy stood a few feet away, looking startled.

"Where did you come from?"

"Umm…" Phoenix looked around. Karmen was sprawled a few feet away. She scooted closer. "Karmen?" The girl didn't move (obviously,) but her voice came through.

"What- how- oh."

"How do you feel?"

"Actually...I feel much better. What happened?"

"Oh. I broke the console trapping the time energy using a rock. I'm surprised it was that easy to just smash it to bits. That's new!" She looked pleased.

"But I mean...what did the energy- what was it doing?"

"It was taking the time energy from all beings who match your species and using it to confuse and complicate time here so it is impossible to escape and it was draining you. But because we got closer to the drain, it drained you faster. But I broke it and you're ok now!"

"H-how do you know all that?" Sammy asked, stunned.

"I just do," Phoenix said with a shrug, "But the maze is just a regular maze so there's a way out now. We can go back to where we came! Everyone ready?" Sammy stood and Phoenix led the way. They kept turning left until finally, they saw the sort of ladder where they had come. Sammy laughed in relief.

"What about me?" Karmen asked quietly. Sammy turned to look at her, then remembered and turned away.

"What about you? Come on, we're getting out of here! And we can take you home!"

"But I mean…I still can't remember…" She trailed off and when Phoenix looked back at her, her head was down and her arms limply at her sides.

"You can't remember where your home is?"

"No…"

"Oh. Neither can I."

"I don't know where I came from- I still don't even know what this place is! And- and I don't know- do I have a family? Is my name Karmen? I don't even know. And I still don't understand- why can't I move when people look at me? Why?!" Her voice broke and Sammy could hear the tears she was trying to choke back. Phoenix sat on the ground next to the stone angel.

"I'm sorry. I don't know where I'm from either, or what this place is, and I think I have a family but I'm not sure. And if I do, I don't know where to find them. I don't think my name was always the Phoenix, and there's vague faces I can't seem to properly remember...I'm sorry." She patted the stone girl's shoulder. "But maybe if you come with us, we can help you find out some things?"

"I-I might like that," Karmen's voice choked out, "Where are you going?"

"Oh, anywhere. Everywhere. Just me, Sammy, Jesse, and you. And the TARDIS, of course."

"How about we go up first and you follow, Karmen," Sammy offered. Though they couldn't see her smile, they could almost hear it in her voice.

"Thank you."

 _Interlude the Second_

 _An old man sat alone in his workshop, the walls covered from floor to ceiling in children's drawings, and in his feeble hands was a toy horse he was working to finish. He had sat in that workshop for many years. Many more years than anyone in the town had lived. His cane sat beside his chair, the decapitated head of a robot sat opposite, and at his feet were piles of shavings from his many projects._

 _The man himself was nothing remarkable. He was old. White wispy hair, wrinkled face, liver spotted scalp, his clothes old fashioned, but his eyes were what revealed his true age. Ancient joy and ancient fear shone from his face, only blotted slightly by the guilt and the pain which he had done penance for the past several hundred years._

 _And yet his smile and his wit had not aged a jot. His smile made you want to dance and his laugh gave you a glimpse of eternity. He was usually surrounded by the children of the village, who giggled and smiled at his turns of phrase and kept him youthful at heart._

 _But when the children could not see him and the villagers were not begging for help, he sat in silence in his chair, next to the cracked wall which glowed with an unearthly light and beat out a signal ceaselessly. He had heard it every day and every day he made a promise. Slowly, he nodded off and when his eyes closed he truly looked like a very weary and very very old man._

 _He was so close to the crack, it did not alarm him that he dreamed of Her. She often appeared in his more lucid dreams. Her face...and others. Other faces that he had loved and lost. But this time it was only Hers. Her eyes impossibly gold, and Her smile impossibly innocent. Still small enough for him to pick her up and take on his knee and tell stories she hadn't heard yet. She turned to him in his dream, and he knew better than to ask her to say something. They never did. They only stared at him. Never spoke. He'd had the dreams since his Northern accent and leather jacket, however long ago that was. He'd thrown himself on the ground begging for forgiveness, for judgement, for punishment. And there had been nothing._

" _Papa?"_

 _The word felt like a blow. He had not heard that voice for hundreds of years. He had never hoped he might hear it again._

" _Papa."_

 _No longer a question. He tried to answer back but he could only cough._

" _Papa where are you?"_

 _He wanted to run to her._

" _Papa, where are you? Who are you?"_

 _He tried to speak again, his voice creaky and unstable, "I'm here...I'm here, on the other side and I promise-" Promise what? To keep her safe? That was a lie and she would surely know it by now. He had said that to her as the war raged outside their home, as her brother had been struck down and her mother gone insane._

" _Help- help me please, Papa! I don't understand it- I don't understand! Help me- Papa!" The light from the crack surged around her, it began to engulf her as her arms desperately reached out for him. He tried to run to her again, but he was old and slow. And then she was gone._

 _The old man stared. Suddenly he wasn't sure if he was sleeping or awake now. Her name escaped his lips gently,_

" _Phoenix...my Phoenix…"_


	7. Chapter 7

A STUBBORN BOX

"Come on," Phoenix pleaded, "Let us in! What's wrong with you?" The TARDIS was stubbornly keeping her doors shut. Jesse was inside the box, and still the TARDIS would not let him out.

"Has she ever done this before, Phoenix?" Sammy asked.

"No! She's sometimes taken me wrong places but never shut me out! Come on, please TARDIS? What's the matter with you?" She gave the door another tug. The TARDIS sort of shuddered and made a funny noise. "Well that's rude! Why are you being so mean? We just want to get inside! We want to show Karmen!" The TARDIS made a few more noises. Phoenix kicked the door in frustration. ¨Stop being so useless! Let me in!"

"Umm, Phoenix," it was Jesse's muffled voice from inside the TARDIS, "There's a message that keeps flashing up on the screen thing. It keeps saying "enemy detected?" Have we got enemies now?"

"There's no one out here but me, Sammy, and Karmen!"

"Oh. So is this Karmen an enemy?"

Phoenix turned to Karmen and asked, "Are you an enemy?"

"N-no. I'm just Karmen. Who's the man in the box?"

"Oh that's Jesse. He's another companion! I love that word, companion! It sounds so friendly. Don't you want to let our new companion in, TARDIS?" The box's exterior panels lit up a few times, then the door opened just a crack. Phoenix managed to slip inside before it closed, leaving Sammy and Karmen outside. "Hey! Let them in!" She pounded on the doors. She ran to the console and turned on the outside scanner.

"What's the matter?" Sammy asked.

"I don't know, I'm trying to find out. She doesn't like something…" The scanner focused in on Karmen, who had turned to stone again. "Huh, that's funny. Karmen you're still stone even though Sammy isn't looking at you."

"The scanner is looking at her," Sammy pointed out.

"Oh. I thought maybe I could trick Karmen into not turning to stone."

"I don't do it on purpose!" Karmen protested.

The scanner suddenly beeped, and showed a new screen. It had no picture but it read out, LIFEFORM IDENTIFIED: WEEPING ANGEL. WARNING: DANGER.

"The scanner is saying there's a Weeping Angel...but I don't know what that means. Anyone know what a Weeping Angel is?"

"Where is it?" Sammy asked.

"It...it says Karmen is the Weeping Angel." Phoenix poked the scanner. Something about the named rose the hair on the back of her neck but she couldn't place why. The name meant nothing to her. She didn't know what a Weeping Angel was.

"What is that?" Sammy asked.

"Karmen, do you know?"

"N-no! I'm not a weeping whatever, I'm Karmen! I'm a girl!"

Suddenly, Sammy's eyes went slightly out of focus. A Daymare. Hitting her right in the middle of this. Perfect. The world tunneled around her, she staggered back and fell hard on the ground.

 _Beware the angels...it was the angels...the angels…_

 _Stone statues, never moving, always coming closer. Teeth, claws, hands stretching out- starving, they were starving._

 _There was the blue box again, surrounded by the angels. The face of a man, speaking urgently to her._

" _Don't blink. Don't blink, whatever you do don't blink!"_

 _Coming closer, never moving, always coming closer-_

Sammy opened her eyes and found herself staring at Karmen, whose hand was mere inches from her arm. She screamed and jumped back, keeping her eyes fixed on the statue.

"Don't touch me!" She shrieked.

"What's wrong, Sammy?" It was Karmen's voice, but that didn't make sense. The Angels had no voices. How did she know that?

 _Don't look away, don't even blink! Don't blink...don't blink..._

"Phoenix! She's an Angel, a Weeping Angel!" Sammy cried.

"Well, yes I know. That's what the scanner says."

"No! You can't let her into the TARDIS! She- she'll eat it!" Sammy didn't move, staring so hard her eyes started to water.

"Eat it? Karmen, are you going to eat the TARDIS?"

"How could I eat the box? It doesn't look very edible."

"What _do_ you eat, Karmen?" Phoenix suddenly asked. Karmen thought for a moment but, the strangest thing was she could call to mind no images of food. That was, she understood the concept of what she should be interested in eating, but for some reason nothing she thought of remotely appealed to her.

"I...I don't know."

"I saw them- the Angels! With the blue box! People- they disappear!"

"What are you talking about?" Karmen demanded, "Stop staring at me! I can't move!"

"It's the Angels-" then another Daymare hit her, but it was different. Not the man in the box, no this was-

 _The place for the traitors...a place for the ones who are impure…_

 _Hundreds of statues, reaching up, faces frozen in pleas for help. Slowly they crumbled, slowly the dust on the floor rose thicker and thicker, the energy slipping away and with it their lives. Wandering, forgetting, deteriorating._

" _Angel, you are condemned to the Maze."_

 _How did I get here?_

 _Does that matter, I don't know._

 _I am Karmen. I am Karmen._

 _I am human! I am human!_

When Sammy came to, she was onboard the TARDIS and Phoenix hovered over her concerned. Jesse was nearby, holding a cup of tea.

"Hi! I'm glad you're awake."

"What- who? Where is Karmen?!"

"Oh she's over there," Phoenix pointed to a far corner Sammy could hardly see.

"We-we've got to get her out of here! She can't-"

"It's alright. The TARDIS explained it. And we know why Karmen turns to stone! It's science, a defense mechanism, not magic at all! Which is a little disappointing but I guess all magic is just science we don't understand yet." Phoenix twirled a piece of hair around her finger, "But are you alright?" She looked closer at Sammy as if trying to detect what was wrong with her.

"I saw- but there was some kind of- the angels- they're evil!"

"I wish you'd stop saying that," came Karmen's voice, "I didn't even know I was an angel until an hour ago. How can I be evil if I didn't even know that I was supposed to be!" Sammy tried to sit up but she felt dizzy and lay back down. Jesse helped her sit up partially and drink a little tea.

"Karmen, can you come here?"

A moment later the statue of the girl appeared next to Phoenix. Sammy scooted backward, more images coming to mind. Screams. Vanishing. Fangs. Smiles.

"Get away!" She shrieked.

"Sammy, I'm going to close my eyes and so are you. And when you open them, Karmen will be touching me and I will not be sent backwards and vanish." Sammy shook her head, but Jesse knelt beside her.

"It's alright, Sammy. I promise it's safe. We're all still here, aren't we?" Slowly, Jesse convinced her to put her hands over her eyes. Phoenix squeezed her eyes shut. When everyone opened them again, Karmen was standing next to Phoenix with one hand on her shoulder.

"See? She doesn't want to hurt us. She's an angel but she doesn't know how or why. Maybe that's what we should call ourselves. The Hows and Whys. Because we don't know any of those. Except Jesse."

"Oh I think I lost all sense of how and why the moment I walked into this very stubborn, clever box, little one," Jesse laughed. Sammy was still nervous. Jesse suggested Phoenix find her a room. So they did.

"Where are we going next, Phoenix?" Sammy asked quietly as she got into bed.

"We're going to find that blue box. But first you should sleep. Besides, I have to make us a map. And there's big parts of the one I have that are all empty."

"Where's the map?"

"In my head, of course! Where all good maps are kept!"

"Phoenix…"

"Yes?"

"Can- can I still go home?"

"Oh. Yes, you can. Anytime. But I'd miss you."

"Why? No one misses me."

"Oh but I would! You're all- all you! You're so you that if I didn't have you there'd be a big spot missing, like the spots in my map. I'd miss you so so much!" Phoenix insisted. "Because the universe wouldn't be right without a Sammy."

"There's lots of Sammys."

"But you're my Sammy. And so that makes you better than all the other Sammys." Phoenix smiled at her with a big wide grin, then skipped off down the TARDIS corridor. Sammy wasn't sure what sense she was supposed to make of that. The walls of her room hummed a little, as if the TARDIS itself was urging her to sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

DOZENS OF BOXES

"Is it this one?" Phoenix called down the hall. Sammy followed her with Karmen appearing a few feet in front of her a moment later and Jesse puffing behind them all. They were in the midst of some very well manicured gardens, by a fishpond teeming with koi and lotus flowers. Under a pagoda was a tall, square, and very handsomely painted blue porcelain urn.

Also, the emperor of China was standing by it with his advisors.

Sammy and Jesse skidded to a halt, out of breath, though strangely not all that surprised that they had burst in on an ancient Chinese garden party.

"Phoenix, that looks nothing like the drawing." Sammy sighed, out of breath.

"Oh. Well...I just put in 'blue box' in the TARDIS navigation so...it just picked out some of the most important ones. This one is worth about a million pounds when you come from." Ignoring the flabbergasted Emperor, Phoenix walked up to the urn and knocked on it. "Hello? Mr. Madman in the Box? Are you in this box? My friend Sammy wants to talk to you." When nothing happened, Phoenix turned to the Emperor. "Sorry for the interruption. You may continue and we will not have to kidnap this box." She turned with a toss of her curly hair. Unfortunately, she turned too fast, lost her balance, toppled over, and sent the urn crashing to the ground where it smashed into pieces. One of the advisors found his voice,

"GUARDS!"

"Oh, we should probably run," Phoenix said cheerfully, "They had really nasty ways of executing people in ancient China…" They took off toward a patch of bamboo and a few Mandarin ducks took flight as they crashed through.

"Where's the TARDIS?" Puffed Jesse.

"Oh umm…where we parked it?"

"Where did we park it?!" Sammy demanded.

"Somewhere this way," Phoenix said vaguely veering toward the bonsai house. Everyone groaned, including Karmen. Phoenix charged toward a garden shed and boldly opened the door. Inside was a gardener and what looked to be the imperial crown princess, both in a rather disheveled state. "Ooops. Sorry," she quickly shut the door, "Wrong one. What were they doing?" She asked Jesse as they sprinted to the cherry blossom orchard.

"Never you mind, just find the TARDIS," he wheezed. In the back of the orchard were about six sheds. Everyone kept opening and closing doors until-

"I got it!" Phoenix cried and they managed to get inside as a party of guards began closing in.

"Phoenix," Sammy said, rubbing a stitch in her side, "We can't keep doing this. There's got to be millions of famous blue boxes in history and jumping from one place to another will take forever! There has to be another way we can try to find the box."

"I'm old, Phoenix. I can't keep running like this. Especially not from French Revolutionaries, whatever that alien convention was, and the Chinese imperial army!" Jesse sat down next to the console.

"Yes...that's true. I don't know how I'll get the TARDIS to find it but I'm sure there's a way." Phoenix was pacing.

"Is there a manual?" Sammy asked.

"A manual for what?"

"Like...you know, cars have manuals. Technically this is another vehicle. Shouldn't there be a manual? A TARDIS manual?"

"Of course not!"

"Why not?"

"Because- because-" She suddenly looked alarmed, "Because _he_ threw it out. He said the manual was rubbish. It's more fun to figure it out on your own…" she trailed off and stared at the console, transfixed.

"Phoenix?" Jesse asked.

"Who's _he?"_ Karmen inquired.

"He's...I don't know. Important...man with a box...no instructions...that's funny. I don't know what that means," Phoenix said, then she suddenly smiled and changed tone, "Well, I don't know a lot of things so that's not new. But we can try to find out how we could get your memories into the TARDIS, Sammy."

"Is there some kind of TARDIS repair shop?" Karmen asked, "Does anyone know how to fix a TARDIS?"

"There are so many things I should know! I should have asked more questions before I started all this," Phoenix pouted a little. She went around, twiddling the buttons and levers on the TARDIS, who beeped and groaned.

"Phoenix...when you say you found the TARDIS in the forest...what did that mean exactly? What forest? Where were you?" Jesse asked carefully. Phoenix thought very hard.

"It was outside of Aberdeen maybe? I don't know...I just left the house, the small house with the other one, the man. He was there. But the woman was gone. And I just knew. I knew where to go, where she was, she was right where I left her."

"And you just...walked inside and knew how to time travel?" Sammy asked incredulously.

"Yes. Well no. Well, maybe? I just...knew. I crashed a few times, got back in and kept going. Because I just knew that it'd make sense eventually. I was still on fire a little, so I don't remember all of it." She shrugged and then began opening parts of the console. Jesse and Sammy looked at each other, bewildered.

"So...what do we do? I mean- can she even get us home?" Sammy asked Jesse.

"I'm not sure. But...well I suppose maybe you do want to go home?"

"You don't?"

"I'm old, Sammy. There's no one left for me to go home to. But I'm sure for you, you've got your parents and siblings and friends?"

"Not really, I'm an only child. And I don't really have friends…"

"Phoenix," Jesse said, turning around, "I think Sammy wants to go home." Phoenix peeked out from under the console, a few spots of oil on her blouse.

"Oh, alright. If she's sure. I can drop her home. But I thought we were looking for the blue box?"

"No, I want to stay," Sammy said quickly, "But I just want to be sure I can get home when I want to."

"It won't be hard, the TARDIS will know how to get you there and I can help her if she doesn't," Phoenix assured her companion, "And I can take you back to the bus station, Jesse."

"Don't worry about me, little one. I don't want to go back to that old station."

"Alright. Well...how about we go deeper into space?" Phoenix asked, excited.

"I want to!" Came Karmen's voice.

"Wait-" Sammy said, "What about- I mean, so Karmen isn't going to make us disappear but…"

"Angels do that when they're hungry and they need time energy," Karmen said, "The TARDIS computer said that."

"Are you hungry?" Sammy asked.

"Well…"

"The point of the prison was to give them no time energy to consume, and they warped the energy to make it all wibbly wobbly so the Angels couldn't get out. So you probably are hungry, aren't you?" Phoenix asked.

"A little…"

"Then let's find you some animals or something to send back in time. You know, instead of people. Or maybe someone who wants to go back in time? I don't know. How much time energy do you need?"

"I don't know yet," Karmen said.

"I'll go somewhere where the animals have long lifespans."

They spent several hours jumping around the galaxy, finding all manner of exotic creatures. Karmen would touch them and as soon as she did, they vanished. Finally, because it was easy, they jumped back to the great locust swarm in the 1800s and Karmen dashed about vanishing thousands of insects until she finally declared she was full. Sammy's initial fear of Karmen had worn off and she didn't constantly feel the urge to look at her whenever she was in the same room.

"Where to next?"

"Oh there's a spaceport I want to show you!" Phoenix exclaimed, "It's in the Jaistea galaxy, on their biggest planet Creron."

"What do you mean, spaceport?" Jesse asked.

"It's like a ginormous airport with a city built around it. People dock in there from the surrounding four galaxies. It's really exciting! And they have really good food!"

"Alright...space food sounds nice." Jesse said.

The TARDIS whizzed and whirled, headed for the Creron galaxy.


	9. Chapter 9

ACCIDENTAL INTRUDERS

Phoenix hadn't been expecting to land in a bedroom. She knew she was bad at landing the TARDIS and sometimes put it on top of a building or a car or even the back of a large animal but she'd never landed inside someone's house. It was a messy room, though definitely the right time because outside the large circular window, she could see some rundown buildings and starships flying in street patterns. They were a few feet away from a tattered hammock piled with blankets and pillows. Exposed pipes ran all throughout the room from floor to ceiling. A globe hung suspended from above next to a few model ships. On top of a steel locker were books and binders all very yellowed and worn. Next to the furnace was a desk with a very sophisticated computer and holographic projection screens and seated at this desk with a can of soda was a small girl with two red braids and big headphones making her small frame look smaller.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Jesse said quickly, "We didn't mean to-" But the girl couldn't hear them. Jesse and Sammy started to back toward the TARDIS which had disguised itself as a tall metal storage unit. Phoenix was staring at the girl.

"Phoenix…" Sammy said urgently.

"Look!" She dashed over to the girl and grabbed one of her braids. The girl startled, and immediately let out a sort of squawk, then fell backwards off her stool, pulling her braid from Phoenix's grasp. The girl looked up, headphones askew, in abject terror.

"Who-"

"Look! She's got hair like mine!" Phoenix jumped up and down with glee, "Maybe I could learn braids! Could you teach me braids?"

The girl continued to stare and stuttered out a few words before falling silent.

"So sorry about her," Sammy said quickly, "She's, um, just excited."

She found her voice after a few more seconds. It sounded much older than she looked. "H-how did you get past Chief?"

"Who's the Chief?" Phoenix asked, "Oh and we are time travelers from the future. Past, I mean. I get those two mixed up sometimes."

"You're- what?"

"Time travelers!"

"No, I got that, b-but what are your names? How did you get past Chief?"

"Oh, this is Sammy. And this is Jesse. And Karmen is over there," She pointed.

"Where- where'd the statue come from?"

"That's Karmen," Phoenix explained, "She does that. Who are you?"

"I'm...I'm Switch." The girl looked carefully at each of their faces then to Phoenix, "What is your name?"

Preening proudly and fluffing her hair, she declared, "I'm the Phoenix!" Switch stared at her. "Um...like the bird?" Phoenix said, wondering if perhaps Switch could not understand her, "I mean...maybe that story didn't make it all the way out here but basically back on old Earth there was a story about a firebird that-"  
"I know what a Phoenix is," Switch said, "But how- you don't look like that at all!"

"I don't look like what?"

"You are THE Phoenix, like there is a 'the' in front of Phoenix?"

"Yes of course, I'm the only Phoenix I know! Do you know another one?" She asked, perking with interest.

Whatever it was Switch knew was interrupted by loud ringing footsteps outside the door. Switch went pale and her hands began to tremble. She pulled the headphones back on and hissed,

"You need to hide." The footsteps stopped outside.

Phoenix and Sammy felt a strong hand pull them back into the TARDIS. It was Karmen, of course. She was far faster than any of them. They pulled the door shut a moment before they heard the hiss of one being opened outside. Phoenix turned on the monitor so they could see outside. Four people entered the room.

One was a tall woman, short dark hair tossed casually to one side, and arms covered in tattoos. She had a strangely girlish face which was in stark contrast to her toned arms and legs. Over her shoulder she had a heavy scepter-like object about the length of a yardstick. Beside her was some kind of human-alien crossbreed with slight antennae, suctioned fingers, bubblegum pink hair, neon green boots, and impossibly angled eyes. She was chewing gum as pink as her hair, smacking and popping it loudly. The other two looked like thugs. One might have been a man if it weren't for the scales on his neck and arms and the other was so startlingly un-humanlike Sammy had no idea where to begin to classify it.

"Is it ready yet?" The first woman asked, rather roughly.

"Well-"

"Have you finished the programming?"

"Yes…" The girl looked very nervous.

"Then it is ready?"

"Well, it's just that I- I wasn't sure- I mean I didn't have very much given to me about her and so-"

"So what?" The woman snapped at her, "Give it here. Any corrections you make you upload on a corrected drive later."

"Just that, the algorithim can't generate as accurate a scenario if it has nothing on her past…" Switch trailed off.

"And that would suggest we knew jackshit about her past! Give me the program." The woman demanded again. Switch reached into a console on the desk and popped out a drive. The holographic screens turned off. The woman turned it over, "Good. Now here," she dropped a folder in front of her. "Do these ones. They're all four worth good money. One is purebred human too. So you better not mess it up." She and her cronies left, as Switch opened the folders. Inside the TARDIS, Phoenix was having a revelation.

"We're not on Creron...we're on an asteroid nearby."

"How do you know?" Sammy asked.

"Because of the gravity."

"The...gravity? What about it?"

"It's fake."

"Um?"

"It's a gravity field, like what the TARDIS has!"

"A what field?"

The people had left the room, and they slowly re-emerged into the room.

"Who are they?" Sammy asked immediately. Switch pretended not to hear. Karmen appeared in front of the desk, holding some of the files.

"The statue!" Switch said in alarm.

"What are these?" Came Karmen's voice.

"Uh...files?" Switch said, looking for the source of the voice.

"Who's the Raven?" Karmen asked again, "And please stop looking at me, I want to read these." Phoenix joined her, looking interested.

"Oh I've heard of her! She's an assassin! What do you have here? There's not very much information on her...what did they give you this for?"

"It's for my job…" Switch was still staring uneasily at the statue. Whenever she blinked, it seemed to change position.

"What job?" Phoenix asked brightly. Switch cocked her head, uncertain what to make of her surprisingly genuine questions.

"I code. I make special codes for them."

"Oh. What do the codes do? Are they for spaceship programs? Like the really big exploration crafts, those are cool! No wait...cool. That's not a good word. Um, they're uh _fantastic_ yes that's a good word!" Switch just shook her head and absently brushed her hair away from her face. Sammy let out a noise of surprise. Her left eye was milky white and surrounded by a web of scars. Switch blushed and started to pull her hair back when Phoenix reached up.

"What happened there?" She asked, genuinely confused. Switch jerked back. "Can I help you?" Phoenix asked earnestly.

"No."

"But..."

"I disobeyed Chief, and she made sure I wouldn't make another mistake." A chilling silence met these words. Even Karmen stopped moving, and no one was looking at her.

"What do they do?" Phoenix asked quietly, "With your codes, I mean. Could you show some of your programs?" Switch was eager to get everyone to stop staring at her and opened up the screens. It showed a very realistic and very beautiful backdrop of an alien landscape. A single figure stood on the screen. He was a tall, built man wearing thin, silvery armor and at his side was a coiled metal whip with ugly spikes.

"Who's that?" Sammy asked.

"Mercury. He's called Zane by his friends, he is a mercenary, a medium level pilot, maximum strength and durability, cannot be killed via radiation or toxins due to his specialized and high metabolism which uses enhanced enzymes to break down poisons as they enter the body. He was made to be the equal of the Raven. His skeleton is encased in near impenetrable metal." Sammy, Jesse, Phoenix and Karmen stared at her. She blushed again, "I make highly specialized programs based on all my knowledge of them. I create an algorithm to calculate what they will do in certain situations. Once I have that, I program various situations to see how they will react and give the finalized programs to Chief. They're made to think and adapt like the real subjects, so as you fight them they learn, like they would in real life." She explained this all rather like a computer herself.

"So...they're like video games?" Sammy ventured. Switch looked affronted.

"This program is not a _game_ it is uploaded to a cutting edge VR program for the purpose of research and strategy."

"So...a video game."

"What did you mean," Jesse said suddenly, "When you said that Phoenix didn't look like she was supposed to?" Switch looked around a little nervously,

"I did a program on the Phoenix. But she's much older and...and just different. I haven't finished it yet...too many holes in the code…" she trailed off.

"But what does the Chief do with the programs?" Phoenix asked.

"She uses them to find the best way to beat them."

"Then what?" Sammy asked. At this, Switch looked down and didn't speak.

"You need to leave," she said softly, "Now. Because if you don't…" she trailed off and looked nervously at the door.

"Well, we can't yet." Phoenix replied, crossing her arms, "The TARDIS navigation system is wrong and we need someone to fix it."

"But-TARDIS? What's that?"

"It's my spaceship," Phoenix pulled her over toward the locker and opened the door to reveal her bigger-on-the-inside spaceship. Switch hardly blinked.

"What do you want me to do about it? I'm a programmer, not a mechanic."

"It's the navigation program I want you to fix! Please?" Switch stepped closer to examine it, running her fingers along the console.

"This is more advanced tech than I've ever seen."

"Pleaseee?"

"If I do it, will you leave?"

"Cross my heart."

Phoenix tried to help, but she mostly was just getting in the way by dropping tools and knocking things over so Sammy took over handing Switch what she needed and Jesse distracted the little Time Lord by asking her to explain how one made a gravity field. Eventually, he glanced behind them and then asked,

"Now why did you ask this young lady to fix the TARDIS system? Do you really think she can?"

"No, she probably can't. It's not that there's anything _wrong_ with the TARDIS system, I think. She's just withholding information. It's like...it's like someone told her not to. It blocks all the places where there might be something too dangerous." Phoenix crossed to Switch's desk to look at the files again.

"Then why did you ask her to?"

"Well, the TARDIS did something for me. We crashed on Mars and I was upset because we had already crashed on another planet and then in South America in 1500, and I couldn't do anything right because I didn't know how to work the landing gears or stabilizers. And then the console was lighting up and flashing red and...well I had to try and fix it. And I did! I fixed the TARDIS and then I figured out the brakes! But, the thing is, there hadn't been anything wrong with the TARDIS. She crashed on purpose and made it look like she was broken."

"How do you know?" Jesse said quizzically.

"I learned how to do diagnostics after that. It showed that the TARDIS had shut a few of her systems down then automatically rebooted them. But still. It made me _think_ I couldfix her. And that I could keep traveling!"

"But...there really _is_ something wrong with the navigation system."

"I'm trying to trick her," Phoenix whispered, "The TARDIS, that is." Jesse sighed. To their surprise, a minute later Switch called,

"I think I fixed it!" Everyone ran to the console. Indeed, the map of the surrounding system which had had some large black spots now displayed sixteen planets. "It had some kind of parental controls on it. I overrode them."

As Phoenix flipped switches and levers a few minutes later, Sammy came to stand beside her, confused.

"Phoenix...why did you leave that girl? She needs our help, I mean..." Phoenix looked up,

"No, she can help herself now."

"What?"

Phoenix smiled, pulled out her sonic device, clicked a button and began drawing a large blue fish on the floor. Apparently, it really was a crayon. "She doesn't need our help anymore because she can help herself. She's a genius! She could have gotten out of that place easy! But she didn't know she could. Someone had to show her that she's more clever than she realizes, so the TARDIS did."

"So what happens to her? Are we just gonna…"

"Don't worry! She's got friends now. I read a little on her history, she makes good friends!"

"We could have brought her with us," Karmen said from the corner.

"No, she's got to stay with her friends. It's very important."

"Why? Does she invent sustainable energy or some kind of important math formula?"

"No!" Phoenix fiddled with the TARDIS buttons for a moment, "See them?" On the monitor screen was a girl with skin paler than snow and a blue symbol on her face, then a tough looking blonde boy missing his front teeth, and finally a tiny little humanoid child of some kind of alien species. "Those people. They are her friends."

"So...is one of them the Really Important Person?" Karmen asked.

Phoenix looked confused, "They're all Really Important People. I wanted to help her escape so she could find them. And then...you know, there's a few less lonely people. They'll look out for each other." Phoenix smiled at the screen and added a bit quietly, "I don't want anyone to be lonely."


	10. Chapter 10

THE BELLS OF NOTRE DAME

Phoenix kept scrolling through the TARDIS database long after her companions had gone to bed. She didn't entirely know how it worked, so it was touch and go, but there was so much that was in the TARDIS system even when she got information she wasn't looking for, she learned something. And now that Switch had turned off the restrictions, there was even more.

"Blue box...blue box- no that's too big," She glanced down at the list from Sammy, "Gallifrey...Gallifrey, TARDIS what do we have about Gallifrey?" The screen shuffled for a moment, then froze, then read out INFORMATION CLASSIFIED. Apparently Switch hadn't gotten all of the blocks. Phoenix tapped the screen, annoyed. "No it isn't! I own this TARDIS, I command you to un-classify it!" The TARDIS beeped resolutely. "Fine! How about...umm, tell me about the Vortex." Nothing changed. "I'm sorry I said I owned you!" An enormous file appeared on the vortex, and after asking the TARDIS politely to print it, she sat in her hammock under the console and contentedly flipped through the file, reading. There was very little known for sure about the Vortex, it was all wobbly and confusing and tangled up, but there was a lot of interesting theories. At the Academy, there was a whole class for the Vortex-

 _The Academy?_

 _That's funny...I don't know how I remember that. What Academy? Was I in school?_

She tried to think harder, what did she learn? She could conjure no images but a faint sense of unease and vague wariness crept over her. The TARDIS beeped softly and the lights went down. She was trying to tell Phoenix to sleep. Phoenix sighed and dumped the file on the floor.

"TARDIS, I don't know where to go next. Won't you take us somewhere? Somewhere we need to go? I'd like that…" she trailed off sleepily and closed her eyes, and began to dream of whatever it is Time Lords dream of.

Upon waking, Phoenix could tell that they had traveled. Sammy and Jesse were just waking up and making their way into the control room, and Phoenix glimpsed Karmen near the door.

"Where are we going today?" Sammy asked, rubbing her eyes.

"I told the TARDIS to take us somewhere we needed to go," Phoenix said, straightening her skirt and fluffing her hair. She looked rumpled and a bit messy.

"Come here, little one," Jesse said with a chuckle, "Let me help you with that hair." Phoenix yawned and sat down next to him. He pulled her hair back from her face and asked Sammy if she had an extra hair tie.

"Oooo! Jesse, do you know braids?" the Time Lord asked.

"Well actually...yes. I do. It's been a long time, but let me think…" he divided her hair into two sections and in a few minutes had two tight braids in Phoenix's hair. Sammy produced another hair tie. Phoenix hugged Jesse around the middle and swung her plaits proudly.

"Karmen! Look, look what Jesse did! I've got braids now!"

Sammy asked amused, "When did you learn to do hair?"

"Oh...some years ago. I had a little girl, you know. A good father learns how to do braids," he smiled, but Sammy caught a trace of sadness. While Karmen and Phoenix were still admiring her braids, Sammy opened the TARDIS door.

"Oh...Phoenix! Phoenix I think we're in Paris."

"Paris? Ooo! So posh! I love Paris! Can you see the Eiffel Tower?"

"No...I don't think it's been built yet. We're in Paris, but a very long time ago." Jesse, Karmen, and Phoenix rushed to the door.

They were in the middle of Notre Dame's square. All the usual souvenir hawkers and fat, camera waving tourists were substituted for street vendors calling out wares such as meat pies and saint's relics, a few devoted worshippers kneeling on the steps, and pigeons scattered around the plaza. The bells in the high tower began to ring in the joyful peals of midday.

Jesse stepped out of the box first, a light in his eyes Phoenix had not yet seen. He clapped his hands and threw back his head and laughed.

"It's Paris! Paris, and Notre Dame, in the 1600s! And there's the bells, ringing just as if the Hunchback himself were pulling the ropes!"

"Hunchback? Like the novel?" Phoenix suddenly asked.

"Yes! Have you read it?" Jesse asked, looking at all of them.

"No," said Sammy and Karmen together.

"I didn't read it…" Phoenix said slowly, "But I think Jane Smith did...and she liked it. So I like it! I remember bits of it!" Jesse would have probably asked her who Jane Smith was but he was far too taken with the scene before him.

"Oh, it's everything Victor Hugo described it as! The stones are so much brighter though, I guess there's not so much pollution!" He smiled again and looked up, "Oh look at all those gargoyles!"

"The gargoyles were always my favorite," Phoenix said, excited, then paused, "But...that's funny. I know it's about 1600…"

Jesse was already walking toward the doors, no longer listening. Karmen followed, freezing every few seconds as someone looked at her. Sammy began to move then looked down at Phoenix.

"What's the matter?" The girl was still staring at the roof of the cathedral. "

"It's just...those gargoyles weren't actually put there until the 19th century. They're not supposed to be there."

Jesse was in high spirits all throughout the marketplace, Karmen at his side. Sammy took everything in cautious wonder. Phoenix was in deep thought, looking childishly perplexed which really just made her look cute. She would look up, then down, tug her braids and keep walking. Sammy was just thinking that her primary school French might pay off when she realized that she could understand everyone around her.

"Phoenix...aren't they speaking French?"

"What? Oh, yes. Of course, we're in France!"

"But...I don't speak French. And I can understand everything."

"Oh. That's a good point. I don't remember learning French either. That's very odd, I've never learned French in my life! Or English."

"But...I've always been able to understand you. Besides, you have an accent like you're from England. I can't place it, but it's sort of London-ish."

"I wonder how I know all these languages. I must've gone to school, but I can't remember…"

"The funny circles I drew, you could read those!"

"Oh yes but those...those weren't- huh. This is making me very muggy. I need to sit down." So she plopped herself down in the middle of the muddy street. Jesse, up ahead, had already managed to purchase two hats from an street vendor (though Sammy had no idea where he got the money.)

"You won't believe this, girls, but we came on the day of the Feast of Fools! I keep waiting to see Esmarelda herself dancing in the streets or Archdeacon Frollo sweeping around the alleyways!" He put the hats on top of Sammy and Phoenix's heads.

"You're so excited," Sammy observed, not really sure if she should phrase it as a question or statement.

"Why aren't you?" Jesse grinned.

"Dunno...feeling a bit sick…"

"What about you, Phoenix? I've never seen you so quiet."

"I'm thinking!" She said earnestly, but failed to look serious due to her ridiculous hat and child's squinty glare.

"Oho! Being a serious time lord now?"

"Being a Time Lord is very serious, thank you very much," She said, sticking her nose in the air.

"Oh come on," Karmen cried, "Can't we enjoy this? It's a festival! I can't remember so many colors! And there's so many people! Though that does make it a bit hard to move…" Karmen had been frozen near Jesse for several minutes now.

"I like parties!" Phoenix exclaimed.

"I thought you were a very serious Time Lord, Phoenix," Jesse teased.

"Serious is for grown ups! Boring grown ups! Let's go!" She straightened her hat and marched toward the gathering crowd.

The performers danced and sang, the smell of freshly baked bread almost masked the smell of manure and waste, fancy nobles rode by, people were behaving most ridiculously and Phoenix and her companions were loving every second. Except Sammy. Phoenix kept noticing her furrowed, worried brow and sad expression.

"Why are you so sad?" She asked, as Jesse went to join a group of peasants who were dancing.

"Oh- I'm not."

"Yes you are. You're sad. Do you want to travel somewhere else? Is that it?"

"No- Phoenix- this is incredible, I mean we are in Paris hundreds of years ago! I don't know why...just seems….how long have we been gone?"

"From the hospital?" Phoenix asked.

"Yes."

"Oh...I don't know. A little while? But we can get you back there any time." They were silent for a few moments, then Phoenix asked, "Sammy, why were you in that hospital?" It suddenly occurred she had never asked.

"It's uh- I dunno it's kinda hard to explain- those dreams and things I've been having. Everyone thinks I'm delusional and prone to stress, stuff like that." Sammy never talked about her "illness" for lack of a better word. She didn't want pity and saying it outloud made it far more real. But Phoenix was different, somehow.

"Oh. No, I don't think so."

"Yeah?"

"No. You can just see through time and space differently. Your mind can travel and see things on the other side of the universe. It's not an illness, it's amazing!" Phoenix smiled encouragingly.

"How do you know?"

"Um- I don't know. But I know that I'm right."

"It's not really amazing," Sammy grumbled, "It sucks. I don't know where I am or if I'm safe or…" Phoenix considered this again.

"No...I guess you're right. It seems amazing to me but it's probably scary to you." She suddenly hugged her, then caught sight of the top of the Cathedral. "We really need to get to the top of that. Come on, let's go look."

"What about Jesse and Karman?"

"They're having fun," she looked over to where Jesse was now accepting tips for his amazing performing statue, and Karman eagerly changed positions as she could. Sammy laughed a little as he winked at them.

"Alright." Getting into the Cathedral proved to be difficult. Guards were stationed outside to keep troublemakers away, so they had to have Phoenix run up breathless and point them off toward where an imaginary thief had gone. They slipped in before anyone else could stop them.

Inside of the cathedral was silent, save for a few faithful who prayed at the front of the altar. They made their way under the tall gothic arches, Sammy looking around in awe. Phoenix quickly found the tight spiral staircase which led up toward the roof.

"This is beautiful…" Sammy said glancing out the narrow windows on the city below.

"I like seeing in back at this time, in your time it's always too crowded and loud. Cathedrals are supposed to be quiet...like awestruck quiet."

"Do you suppose we'll run into anyone?"

"If we do, we can just ignore them," Phoenix shrugged.

"Why are we doing this again?"

"The statues. They're not supposed to be there."

"But- they're the gargoyles. That's what makes Notre Dame so famous, the gargoyles."

"No," Phoenix shook her head, "It's the bells. And the gargoyles weren't added until the 1800s, like I said."

It was windy on top of the cathedral, but looking across the roof with the delicate arches and nests of the pigeons and belltower yards in front of her she almost forgot she was in Paris at all. It seemed its own world made of stone. Phoenix was ahead of her, already pointing that ridiculous crayon at a statue. Sammy took a few hesitant steps toward the nearest gargoyle. It was a hunched creature, with two clawed forearms, enormous ears, a horn protruding from its head, and mouth full of fangs, leering down at the passersby. She passed to the next statue, posed similarly to the first but with a flute in its hands. Sammy turned back to the first and jumped.

It had turned, its claws in completely different positions. Backing up, Sammy kept her eyes fixed on the statues.

"Phoenix…"

"Stupid thing, isn't working!"

"Phoenix!"

"Hm?"

"That gargoyle. It moved. When I wasn't looking."

Phoenix looked where Sammy pointed and gasped a little.

"Oh...yes, yes it did. I think we're meeting some of Karman's cousins, but I don't think they're as considerate as her-" Phoenix turned around and stared at the gargoyles behind them, "Except that a few of these actually _are_ statues. I just don't know which ones-"

"What do we do?!"

"Ummmm- don't look away, don't even blink! Just- just make your way slowly back to the door, and we can get away. Just don't blink."

Karman and Jesse, far from being concerned about the gargoyles atop the cathedral, were enjoying themselves in a small secluded courtyard where they could hear the sounds of the festival and see the river without many seeing them so Karmen was more free to move. Jesse was trying to form a question,

"Now...uh, I'm not so sure that I understand all of that talk about angels and all that, Karmen. Could you explain...I mean - not to be rude - but what are you?"

Karmen paused for a while, thinking. "All of the scanning things identify me as a Weeping Angel. And I know what those are, at least I know what they do. But I don't remember anything about them or what I was doing in the maze. I know it was a prison. So I must've done something wrong to end up there."

"So I may be traveling with a highly dangerous criminal?" Jesse said teasingly, trying to reassure her. It seemed to work because there was a trace of amusement in her voice when she said,

"Maybe. But, I can't remember! I can't remember how long I was there or anything before…."

"Nothing before?"

"It's a little like what Phoenix says where I can remember a few pictures in my mind and a few words. And I remember things without knowing how I know them."

"So...Weeping Angels. Phoenix and Sammy both seemed pretty scared of them. Because you all eat…"

"Time energy. If I wanted to feed on your time energy I would only have to touch you and it would send you back in time however many years your life has left." Jesse kept thinking about this, and decided he understood it enough to ask no more questions.

"You remember meeting any of these other angel critters?"

"No...I don't know any others. But I know they are not kind and they feed on anyone they can find. I am...afraid." Jesse couldn't help but look at her and pat her on the stone shoulder. They were silent for a time, listening to the ebb and flow of the crowd.

"Why do you love the cathedral so much?"

"The book! The Hunchback of Notre Dame! It was my daughter's favorite, like I said. I read it to her twice and she would dress up as Esmerelda and I would be her Quasimodo and carry her around on my shoulders," he sighed, "She was fascinated by the old place. I took her a few times by the train and she would sit on a pew and watch the stained glass for hours," his eyes looked misty, "And she'd sing and twirl outside and make all the pigeons flutter away. Ah, we loved that book."

"Where is your daughter now? We should bring her along!"

"No, I don't think we can. She died, a long time ago."

"Oh...what happened?"

"An accident. A car accident."

"But we have a time machine! We could go get her before she died!"

"I suppose. But something about that seems wrong." Karman was put out by this.

"Couldn't you at least ask to visit?"

"Maybe." He looked sadly at the cathedral.

"I'm sorry…"

"Wait - where'd all the gargoyles go?" Jesse stood up suddenly and pointed. Karmen looked up and noticed that indeed all but two of the gargoyles were missing.

"Didn't Sammy and Phoenix go to the cathedral?" She asked.

"Yes...they did. Something about the gargoyles."

"What about them?"

"Well, she said they didn't belong here."


	11. Chapter 11

NO REST FOR THE WEARY

No sooner had Jesse and Karmen stepped foot in the cathedral than they nearly ran headlong into Phoenix and Sammy who were both frantically scrambling away out of breath.

"We- have- to go," Phoenix wheezed, "Bad. Bad angels...get to TARDIS"

"Bad angels?"

"TARDIS! Now!"

"What do you mean, bad Angels?" Came Karmen's voice.

"They're here for you," Sammy said in a suddenly distant voice.

"What?"

"The Angels…you escaped the prison. They're here to take you back." Sammy turned around and then screamed. Twenty feet away were three of the gargoyles. Phoenix took the lead.

"We need to get to a crowd, that way they can't move, come on back toward the festival!"

Without looking back, they began to move away, staring at the statue.

"Wait- I can't- move-" Phoenix turned her head slightly to the left and saw that indeed Karmen was frozen to the spot, staring at the other Angel. A horrifying thought dawned on her.

"Oh no…Karmen can't move! And neither can the Angel! They're both looking at each other!" Jesse and Sammy quickly caught on to what she was saying.

"W-what do we do?" Sammy asked, suddenly panicked. The crowd was drawing closer; a sort of parade had begun. More of the Angels were coming, but four gargoyles were now frozen at the Cathedral door. And still no one seemed to notice the statues.

"Jesse and I, we'll go get the TARDIS. Sammy you stay here and make sure those ones don't get any closer!" Phoenix pulled Jesse along and they disappeared into the crowd. Sammy looked around frantically, though for what she wasn't sure.

"Karmen? Can you still speak?"

"Yes."

"Alright…" She stood next to the statue, looking behind, staring at the statues on the steps of Notre Dame.

"Are you scared, Sammy?"

"Oh, just a bit. Just a bit, how are you _not_ scared?!"

"I am. I'm worried I might not be able to move ever again, but I'm trying not to think about it."

"How do you just forget that you're literally stone?"

"I don't know. Maybe we keep talking about something else."

"Oh...alright. Um…" Sammy nervously fiddled with her sweater sleeves, "Do you dream?" She asked a bit suddenly then added, "Only because, you know, you're not exactly human and I was just curious if other species dream too…"

"Huh. You know, I don't dream that I can remember." The crowd was thick around them, obscuring the Angels from view. No one seemed to be alarmed at the sight of a gargoyle and Angel statue having a standoff.

"No?"

"No. I don't really dream. Actually, I'm not really sure if I sleep. I haven't tried it yet. But you dream a lot, don't you?"

"Yes...I do. A little too much. Sometimes I dream and I'm not asleep."

"So do you think this is all a dream?"

"I considered that, but no. This is too long to be one of my dreams. And as weird as its been, it makes too much _sense_ to be one of my dreams." Sammy still couldn't see the cathedral steps.

"So Phoenix found you on Earth, at a hospital, she said."

"Yes. Are you from Earth, or do you know?"

"I...I don't know. I feel like I've been to Earth before. I have some recollections of what it looks like. But I don't know when those recollections are from."

"So you really remember nothing before the prison?"

"No images...I can remember a few emotions. But nothing else…" The steps became visible for a moment. Sammy counted four gargoyles before they vanished. When the people parted again, they were gone.

"Sometimes I feel like I remember memories that aren't even mine," Sammy said, trying desperately not to panic as she scanned the area.

"That must be confusing,"

"It is, I -" she stopped and let out a shaky breath, "They're getting closer, Karmen." The crowd was thinning around them, and between people she could see them moving closer. They had spread out so she could only look at two at a time.

"How many?" "Four." Sammy refused to blink, staring at them as long as she could but they just kept getting closer, a few inches at a time. "What happens if they touch me?"

"You get sent back in time…"

"Oh great. Living in a sixteenth century feudal village is really _not_ on my to do list. I like indoor plumbing. And personal hygiene." The first of the Angels was now nearly two feet away. "No, no, no I really do not want to stay here, I like having a sewage system and wifi and the right to own property-" Suddenly, the TARDIS materialized around them. Phoenix was looking worried but burst into a smile when she saw them.

"Oh good! We got here in time! I kept having problems landing the TARDIS. Are you alright?" She asked, suddenly realizing Sammy looked very pale, "You should sit down."

"No, we're all alright. Just cutting it very fine there." Karmen added, "Now I'm going to go move around for a bit." She disappeared down the hallway. Sammy still looked pale and now seemed to be having trouble breathing. Jesse helped her sit. Phoenix looked very concerned.

"Oh no, I forgot that humans are breakable! Did I break her? Is she alright?" She poked Sammy's knee and looked closely at her face.

"Sammy," Jesse said gently, "What is the matter?"

"I just - I think my body - we've been gone too long. Need...meds."

"Alright, what can we do?"

"Go back to the hospital...need meds." Phoenix, still concerned, obeyed and flipped a few switches. She made the landing outside the hospital on her first try.

"Phoenix, I think you ought to stay here," Jesse said, "I can go help Sammy, and you stay with Karmen and the TARDIS, alright?" Confused, Phoenix consented and watched as he helped Sammy out the doors. Karmen joined her a few minutes later.

"What's wrong?"

"I think I did something…"

"Something like what?"

"I think I damaged Sammy somehow. I forgot that humans can be so delicate."

"Delicate? Jesse and Sammy don't _seem_ delicate."

Phoenix sighed, "No, they don't seem so delicate but they are. They're just so...so stubborn. All humans are! I mean, they can drown but they still sail the oceans of their Earth sometimes in no more than wooden buckets. They domesticated predators! They know how dangerous space is and yet they _still_ venture out there, despite the fact that there is no water, oxygen, or anything their species needs to survive. They stand up to armies they could not possibly hope to defeat! They're brave, so brave they can be stupid. I forget sometimes they're not as indestructible as they think they are."

"You sound like you have a lot of experience with humans..."

"I-I guess I do- I mean- I think I _was_ one of them...a long time ago."

She felt a hand pat her on the shoulder tentatively.

"It's ok, Phoenix."

Jesse looked at the clock and realized that Phoenix had dropped them off only fifteen minutes after they had left, so it took very little explanation as to where they had been. Nurses shooed Jesse out of the room after a while, so he waited outside to hear how she was doing. It seemed the doctors were mystified as to how Sammy's body had processed the morning's medication so quickly. A nurse tried to explain to Jesse how the pills worked, but he didn't understand her medical mumbo jumbo.

"All I need to know is if she is alright."

"Yes, sir. She will be just fine. The dosage is high which means the side effects are also much greater…" he let her continue for a while then excused himself. Back in the lobby, he looked out the window, realizing the TARDIS was gone. He hadn't long to wait. Phoenix stepped out of the large fish tank in the center of the lobby, or rather she crawled out of the cupboard below it where a filtration system would have been on a normal fish tank.

"She does like to show off," Phoenix nodded at the tank, "Where is Sammy?"

"Ah. I think we should give her a few days to recover."

"Oh alright. Get in the TARDIS and we can go visit her a few days in the future."

It took Sammy two hours to realize that Jesse, Karmen, the TARDIS and the Phoenix were gone. At first she was too dazed to care. Then she began to panic. They could be gone for days. Weeks. They could really be gone as long as they pleased. Maybe she'd never see them again. Had she really ever been with them at all? Or had it all been another Daymare, a really vivid one? She began turning the details over and the more she thought, the more she doubted. When she said it all out loud it sounded ridiculous. A shape-changing box with a girl who could fly it through time and space? Statues that were only statues when you looked at them? Living gargoyles atop Notre Dame? It couldn't have been real.

And yet all those stars and galaxies...all that running...she wanted it to be real. Looking out the window, she could barely see any stars against the garish London sky but she whispered to no one in particular,

 _Please let it be real._

Alright, question time! So as I work out the plot yet to come, I'd like a little feedback. Which character's backstory would you want to know more about? (besides Phoenix's obviously, since that's classified :) ) Additionally, which character do you like best so far?!


	12. Chapter 12

Just a short addition this weekend, didn't have much time. Would still appreciate any feedback about which character you like best or any backstory you're most invested in :)

INTERLUDE

 _The war raged on outside her window. At first the war had been so far away they only heard of it through newsclips at the Academy. The war crouched closer and closer, rearing its ugly head nearer and nearer. But to the child, it only felt real when her father was no longer sitting on the end of her bed at night, telling her stories until she slept. Now she lay in bed, looking up at the carefully painted stars on her ceiling, listening to her brother turning restlessly in the bunk above. She clutched at her covers, and listened, as if she could hear the sound of battle on Skaro._

 _The Academy proclaimed they were winning, but wherever the girl turned she could only see loss. When her father came back to visit, it was only because his very dear friend's daughter had been lost as well. He was tired now, and sad. Still she had begged him, please Papa, tell me stories. He didn't refuse, he sat at the end of her small bed and spun tales until her eyes drooped._

 _The next day he was gone, and every night after that the sounds of the war haunted the girl's dreams. The sounds of war are most hideous when heard by a child. The grown ups pretended not to hear. But the sounds only seemed to worsen. When she asked father's friend what he heard, he said,_

" _Only the sound of drums, dear. Only the drums of war."_

Sammy woke with a start, images of dreams still flashing through her head. She looked around hopefully, but her room was empty. After a minute she could hear her mother arguing with the nurses, probably about how long she would have to stay. Sammy shivered a little. Hospitals were always cold and the sheets were always thin as wafers. The more she waited, the more she began to think it had all been a dream or her meds or a bizarre combination of the two. Dr. Dorr came to tell her that they would be keeping her there until they could determine what had caused such a dramatic relapse in such a short period of time. She had blood drawn and a few nurses bombarded her with questions. Her mother stayed with her for several hours but when night came, Sammy insisted she didn't need to stay and after a good twenty minutes of convincing, she went home.

She wished she had something to draw with. It helped her sort things out when she could see them. Usually the faces in her dreams were gone by the time she woke but the face of a little girl, an old man, and a stone angel would simply not go away. She had to draw to remember the faces, but now she wanted to draw to get them out of her head.

 _You know it was real. You touched the stars._

 _But what if it wasn't?_

 _You know it was real._

 _If they're not coming back I'd rather they weren't real at all._ She firmly told herself and then turned over to sleep, burying her head in her pillow.


	13. Chapter 13

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Sammy woke as the sun filled her room, blinked, and became aware of someone sitting on the other side of her bed. She began to roll over to tell her mother she didn't need to be so worried, when to her complete shock she found not her mother but a ten year old girl in a neat blouse and skirt with matching Mary Jane shoes. She was reading _The Hobbit_ and said without looking up from her book,

"Sammy, how did you get your name?"

"I uhh...my parents gave it to me."

"What about your nickname? Did you decide you liked Sammy better than Samantha?"

"Well...not exactly. My dad just started calling me that and it stuck." Sammy felt something move behind her and when she turned there was an angel statue holding a plate of French toast.

"You can take it," Phoenix said as Sammy hesitated, "She got your breakfast. I suspect Jesse is coming along soon." She took the plate, then remembering to be polite, turned away so that Karmen was free to move as she pleased.

"But like I was saying," Phoenix continued, "Do all humans get their name like that?"

"Like what?"

"Their parents give it to them?"

"Uh, yeah. That's usually how it works."

"Oh. I wonder what my name is."

"You're the Phoenix. That's your name," Sammy said more like a question while taking a bite of her toast. Phoenix sighed.

"No, no. The Phoenix isn't my _name. I'm_ the Phoenix. That's what I call myself, it's the name I chose. That's not my _real_ name, silly."

"Then what is your name?" Sammy asked, confused.

"That's the problem! I don't know! I haven't got any parents to tell me!" She closed her book and hopped off the bed in frustration.

"Oh. But you're surely old enough to remember your name?"

"Yes, I'm old enough but I can't!"

"She's been very upset about this for a bit," Jesse said as he entered holding two glasses of orange juice and chuckling, "She wants a name, as if The Phoenix wasn't a proper enough title."

"No you don't understand! I want a real name, and so while we look for the mysterious blue box I am also going to look for my parents because I want to know my name!" She stomped her foot, which was more adorable than anything and did nothing but earn her some amused laughter.

"And like we said, we will find them little one." Jesse assured her.

"Do you want to come with us, Sammy?" Phoenix turned her wide eyes to the invalid in the bed.

"Of course I do…"

"But what?"

"I just - this is insane. All of it is insane and I don't even know if its real and maybe it's all just a dream and what if I'm gone too long or what if I _die_ or- or maybe I am just crazy -"

Jesse placed a hand on her arm.

"You only come if you want to, Sammy. No one is forcing you to do anything crazy. Yes, I know it is crazy. It makes no sense and I understand why you might think it's all a dream. But trust me, it is real."

Phoenix climbed back up on the bed, "We packed you a bag, all the things you need. You can bring your medicine! We'd be happy to have you aboard...if you like?"

"Please do," Karmen added. Sammy looked at each of them, then to a large cupboard which had mysteriously appeared in her room. The door was ajar and it twinkled invitingly.

"What the hell?" She said with the ghost of a smile, and swung her legs out of bed, "Let's go see the universe."

Karmen was hungry again, which was a bit anticlimactic. They spent a few hours hopping between times and spaces getting enough organic time energy for her to eat. Finally, after Karmen declared herself full, Phoenix sat at the base of the console and began to plan out where they would go next.

"Have we got a map this time?" Jesse asked.

"Nope!"

"What are we looking for first? Phoenix's parents or the blue box?" Sammy asked.

"I think finding Phoenix's parents is more important here," Jesse interjected. Phoenix was busy tinkering with the console. All at once, the top came off with a clatter.

"Ooops. That was a mistake." she looked closely inside with an odd fascination, "Whoa! It's like the TARDIS has guts!" she poked something in the console. Sammy looked across to see and made a face. It did look a bit like organs, sort of pulsing and pink. It recoiled to Phoenix's touch and the TARDIS began beeping. "No...it isn't guts. It's the TARDIS' brain!"

"I wouldn't keep poking it, Phoenix. I know I wouldn't like it if someone started jabbing my brains." Phoenix agreed and replaced the cover.

"There's too many holes in the map, even with the ones that Switch fixed. It's like the TARDIS is damaged somehow. Somewhere deep down…" she patted it gently, looking concerned, "I think we should fill in some of the holes."

"Do we really have time for that?" Sammy asked.

"We got all the time in the world, Sammy!" Phoenix smiled, "Allons-y! Wait. Hang on. No I don't like that." But before she could think of another catchphrase, the TARDIS was already in motion, spinning recklessly into space.


	14. Chapter 14

_INTERLUDE_

 _The music was the only thing that made it bearable. Lots of the higher ups didn't believe it was necessary to communicate through something like song. It was hard to put Gallifreyan into a song, because their words were not always the right ones. The songs became too complex and big to be beautiful. It was the song of the Ood that first made her fall in love with music. Papa had taken her there once. She remembered it. He had been too busy to hear the music, but_ _she had. Their music made you stop and listen, made you cry because of the beauty, and no Time Lord had time for that. Which confused the girl because they kept saying they had all the time in the world._

" _Please, Papa, I want some music."_

" _Whatever for?"_

" _I don't want to hear the drums of war."_

" _The what?"_

" _Master said the sounds we hear are the drums of war. I don't want to hear them. I want to hear music." And then he had sat down on the end of her bed._

" _Hmm. Maybe we can make some music. What music?"_

" _A song, like your stories! But sing it."_

" _Who shall it be about?"_

" _Who it is always about, Papa. About the Traveling Man!" Her father smiled and started to make up some verses. The old soldier, so revered, singing a childish song to his daughter._

 _Children care very little for fame and status._

 _And the child giggled and clapped her hands and with a kiss on the forehead, he tucked the covers around her._

" _Papa, are you leaving again?"_

" _The Traveling Man has work to do, darling. To keep you safe, just like I said."_

" _Come back, then."_

" _Of course. Don't listen to those drums, sing our song instead."_

THE BOY TIME FORGOT

Ashton Karlsson sat at the skatepark like he did every Wednesday, mostly because he had nothing better to do. He lived in a section of town where the inhabitants were either ancient or too young to play outside unsupervised. Somehow he was the only teenager in the area or at least the only one he'd seen. No one came to the skate park anymore. Grass grew between the cracks of the concrete and even the graffiti was faded. He sat on the edge of a ramp and ran his skateboard up and down it with his foot, waiting. Though for what he had no idea.

The entrance to the park was a low chain link fence overgrown with weeds because no one actually used that entrance. Adelè had always hopped the fence or invented some ridiculously complicated way to climb a tree and drop down or toss her board over and try to land on it before it rolled away. Ashton tried to form her picture in his mind: leggings, a tank-top usually emblazoned with a superhero logo or a skate brand, neon green converse, all manner of rubber band bracelets for bands and political causes, different colored beanie over her two black braids, and a tattoo of crown above the crook of her elbow. He smirked at that, he remembered how their mother had thrown a fit over it.

Adelè had always skated since finding an old penny board in a second hand store. And when she saved up for a new one, she'd given him the old one and so for as long as he could remember after that, he'd trailed behind her in second-hand sneakers and Vans t-shirt. The image faded from his mind and he opened the paperback sci-fi novel he was trying to read. His thoughts kept wandering away. In his book they were speculating time travel and quantum nonsense that wasn't exactly real science; he didn't mind. But he kept thinking, was time moving past him or was he moving through time? Was time ever really moving? Or was it just how people measured the rate of decay? _Did_ time really exist? Or maybe he was the one standing still, being washed over in waves of time. But nothing ever seemed to really move around him. Things just stayed. And stayed. And stayed.

"Hey!"

He looked up. Standing in the gap between the chain link fence was a box made up of more colors than he had seen in a long time and it spread tiny rainbows everywhere as it caught the light. Standing in a sort of doorway was a girl about his age with dirty blonde hair and a blue flannel shirt too big for her. She stumbled out and waved again, but not a wave of greeting. She seemed panicked. Behind her came an old man holding something in his arms.

"Please," the blonde girl cried, "Helps us!"


	15. Chapter 15

TIME PAST AND TIME PRESENT

Ashton was incredibly thankful his parents weren't home. He didn't know how he would explain an old English man, a blonde teenage girl, plus an odd statue that kept popping up around the room. And of course, there was the little redheaded girl who had a massive burn covering the left side of her body. Her breath was raspy and she hadn't opened her eyes. The sight would have probably left him more nauseated if he hadn't been so caught off guard by everything else happening.

"What do we do?" the blonde cried frantically, unable to look at the girl.

"Um - there's a hospital-" Ashton started, before the old man cut him off,

"What is a hospital supposed to do for her? Deadliest fire in the universe, said so herself!"

"What was she thinking?!"

"She didn't remember until it was too late," a voice that seemed to come from the statue said. Ashton looked around, asking himself why he didn't find this whole thing stranger.

"Hang on, who are you all? I didn't really get names and, uh, what happened to her?!"

"That is Sammy," the old man pointed, "I'm Jesse, the statue is Karmen and yes she does talk, and this is Phoenix. She was hit by some kind of tin cheese grater that kept shouting exterminate and something about a Dalnet - "

"Dalek!" Sammy exclaimed, the very word making her scared though she didn't know why, "She was hit by a Dalek she's going to die and oh god why no I don't - it's -"

"Young man, if you could go get something for Miss Sammy to drink and help her sit down I think that would be a great favor to us all." Ashton hastily and clumsily got a glass from the kitchen and awkwardly helped the hyperventilating Sammy sit on the couch. Jesse had Phoenix lying on the kitchen counter. The girl coughed and her eyes fluttered.

"I remember the Daleks now…" she muttered.

Jesse sighed in relief, "Alright, little one, how do fix you up? Where should we go? What do we do? Tell us what to do."

"Most dangerous fire in the galaxy...can't do...anything."

"Oh come on now, there's bound to be something," he said with a hopeful smile.

"No...just wait."

"What - what is a Dalek? Where'd you all come from?" Ashton looked around helplessly.

"Outer space, now where do you keep disinfectant?" Jesse said briskly. Ashton pointed at the cupboard above the fridge but before Jesse had even got there, Phoenix began to scream. It was a terrible thing to hear. Raw fear and pain in any being's voice is gut-wrenching but in a child it may be one of the worst sounds in all of time and space.

Jesse turned and then everyone shouted and jumped back. Gold fire burst around Phoenix, dancing up her arm, across her shoulders, obscuring her face, shooting upwards - then just as suddenly, it stopped. Breathing heavily, she gingerly touched her side.

"There. I'm all better." She stared around at their new surroundings then giggled, "I didn't know that would happen! Good thing I stopped it, or it might've regrown all my body!" She smiled at them, and they stared back dumbfounded.

"You know, at this point, I won't even question it," Came Karmen's voice a second later, "Having magic fire that heals you isn't much stranger than finding out you're a stone angel."

"Who are you?" Phoenix asked brightly to Ashton, hopping off the counter, "Did you fall?"

"Uh - no."

"Your pants are ripped."

"They're supposed to be ripped."

"Oh. Why?"

"It's um…" he looked uncomfortable, "I dunno. I just bought them like it, they're cool."

"And you've got some dirt under your eyes," she reached up on tip toe to wipe it away.

"That's supposed to be there!" He pushed her away.

"Is that eyeliner?" Sammy laughed. Ashton mumbled something about how eyeliner was really not what they should be focusing on as they were the ones who said they were from outer space. "We appreciate your help," Jesse said, as Sammy handed Phoenix her flannel since her clothes were pretty much toast - literally. "We'll just be going now."

"Wait! Hold on, you need to do some explaining before you go anywhere!" Ashton exclaimed, "Because this is weird. Like really weird. Who are you? What's a Dalek? How'd you get here? And what did you _do?"_ He said looking at Phoenix.

"We're time travelers. I'm a Timelord, or lady whichever you please. I'm an alien, and I guess that's one of my alien abilities. I didn't know that, it's exciting to learn! Oh but Jesse and Sammy are human. Karmen is a Weeping Angel, but don't worry she won't absorb your time energy. The box we came out of is Time And Relative Dimension In Space."

"Wait...no it isn't," Sammy said, "It's a TARDIS."

"Oh right. Well...yes that's what I said. TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension In Space."

"Hold on," Karmen interjected, "It's an acronym? I didn't know that! I just thought you made up a word and decided to call it that."

"No...but it makes sense, right?"

"So this TARDIS...it's your time machine?" Ashton interrupted.

"Yes. Yes it is."

"And you travel around in it, whenever you like?"

"Yes we do."

"You can go back to any time you like? See anyone you like?"

"Sort of. There are rules. And restrictions. But I don't know them all. So yes."

"C-could I go with you?"

"If you like. But it's not always fun. I mean I just got shot by a Dalek, and if it had been any of you, you'd be dead." Phoenix looked solemn.

"Oh I don't care. I don't bloody care," Ashton had a curious expression on his face, a sort of hunger, "I could be shot by a thousand robots and I wouldn't care. Just, can I come?"

Ashton's response to the TARDIS was best by far. Phoenix grinned as he gaped and wondered and ran around the console in sheer awe. He was speaking in all sorts of nerd terms that only Phoenix seemed to understand, and finally Sammy said,

"Did you actually want to fly the time machine or just look at it?"

"C-could I drive?"

"Only if you put on some real pants," Jesse grinned. Phoenix disappeared, probably to find herself some new clothes.

"Nothing is wrong with my pants!" Ashton insisted hotly. Sammy just giggled and added,

"You might want to bring some more clothes with you, it's hard to tell how long we might be traveling."

"Do you two live here?" he asked.

"Sort of…"

Phoenix reappeared in an outfit that looked exactly like her other one, "The TARDIS had it ready for me. She's so reliable." Jesse chuckled, then suddenly picked her up and hugged her.

"Don't you do that to me again, ok?"

"Do what?" Phoenix asked, confused but pleased at being picked up.

"You're very clever, little lady, but not always smart. You need think before you just rush into something, or I might lose you." He set her down and kissed the top of her head. Ashton called,

"Come on kid, you gonna show me how this thing works or not?"

"Where do you wanna go?"

"Earth. March 15, 2020."

If Phoenix found it odd that he had a very specific date already in mind, she didn't show it and instead skipped into, "No, that's boring, nothing interesting happens that day. Come on, I'll show you something really impressive!" Phoenix glowed and slapped a few buttons and the TARDIS shuddered to life.


	16. Chapter 16

AN OLD ENEMY

They traveled to many places, some of which Phoenix couldn't remember and some of which she could. They explored and climbed and picnicked and roamed. They had a few close run ins with intergalactic law, local authorities, and a handful of angels who still seemed intent on following Karmen. It wasn't until they were leaving New Earth after watching an amazing New Year's parade that they ran into any real trouble.

Phoenix's idea of "dangerous" was rather relative, (they had outrun the Spanish Inquisition and something called a Sontarran) but this danger...it could only be described as hell. In high heels.

The bar they had landed in wasn't exactly what Phoenix had in mind. It was in a remote corner of the Milky Way, and shady at best. Jesse was being a grumpy old man and insisting he needed to rest before "you lot finally run me out of juice," and Karmen decided not to cause alarm by appearing in the middle of a heavily populated area. All eyes turned to Phoenix, Sammy, and Ashton as they entered. Phoenix was mostly clueless to their situation, but decided she didn't like the place because of its funny smell. A hulking monolith of a man covered in scars and wearing very little over his greyish muscles stood in one corner and a hideous hag of a woman with a long neck and indistinguishable alien features was in another. All seemed to be leering at the intruders. Sammy shuddered. One man at the bar noticed her and winked, then strode over.

"Hi. I'm Captain Jack Harkness. What is your name?" He directed his question to Sammy who blushed a little and Ashton scowled until the charming man turned his attention to him, "Oh, and yours?" he asked after looking him up and down.

"I'm the Phoenix," Phoenix said, oblivious that he wasn't talking to her.

"Sammy," Sammy said a little breathlessly, and Ashton muttered his name reluctantly.

"And what brings you strangers here? You look a little young to be drinking."

"I think it was an accident," Phoenix said.

"And _you_ are definitely too young to be here," he said looking down at her, "How old might you be, little lady?"

"I don't know."

"Yean neither do I," he grinned, "I lost count." They were interrupted by someone outside screaming,

"They're coming! Everyone out!" There was a sudden and violent stampede towards to door. Captain Jack Harkness looked only mildly concerned and shouted over the din,

"Gotta dash. See ya 'round, Sammy. Ashton." Tipping them an enormous wink, he leaped over the bar. Almost everyone made it outside before "they" got in. "They" appeared to be some sort of police force, and Phoenix racked her brains trying to remember which system and which century they belonged to. The officers quickly lined up all of the stragglers, including Phoenix and Co. Of course, Jesse picked the exact wrong moment to pop out of the TARDIS to see what was the matter and was consequently rounded up as well.

"Are we being arrested?" Sammy asked, faintly.

"If we are, I hope it's better than being arrested in Alabama in 1965.

"What?" Ashton asked.

"The March on Selma. I was there, you know. Twenty years old, I went to an American university. Wasn't always living in Chiswick, me."

"But - how old are you?"

"Oh about sixty-five last I checked."

"That's impossible! The March on Selma was sixty-two years ago! That would make you three years old when it happened!"

"Actually, technically, from where we are now the March on Selma happened a few hundred thousand years ago," Phoenix interjected.

"But that still doesn't make sense-"

"We picked you up from 2027, doofus," Sammy rolled her eyes at Ashton, as the soldiers searched them, "We're from 2014."

"Actually, I'm from 2011," Jesse corrected.

"What?!" The soldiers ordered them to be silent. They were questioning the bartender and didn't seem interested in the few humans dressed in ancient clothing.

"May I come in now?" A female voice from just outside the door asked sweetly.

"Area is secure," one man barked back, and a young woman with the curliest hair Phoenix had seen (beside her own) entered, smiling as if she were on holiday.

"Still don't know what it is you think you'll find here…" the man muttered.

"Oh hush, dear. You do your job and I'll do mine," she patted his cheek and began to make her way to the far side of the room then stopped. "Who are these?" she pointed to Sammy, Jesse, Ashton, and Phoenix. The soldiers shrugged.

"We're here by mistake. Please, couldn't you let us go?" Phoenix said with her best little girl smile.

"Hmm. Well, your clothes indicate you're here by a very big mistake."

"Are you a scientist?"

"Why do you think that?"

"You seem like one. And you've got a tool," she pointed to a strange instrument in the woman's hand that seemed strangely reminiscent of Phoenix's crayon.

"Very good eye there. What's your name?"

"I'm the Phoenix. I'm a time traveler and these are my companions." The last word caused the woman to pause.

"Your...companions?"

"Yes. My companions.

"And how is it that you time traveled?"

"Oh, we used the TARDIS." Now the woman went pale.

"A what?"

"A TARDIS. She's my friend. And she's not always very good at getting us where we want to go. She brought us here, for example." Phoenix looked very annoyed. The woman knelt in front of the little girl.

"Where did you get this TARDIS?"

"Oh. Um...it was in the woods. In the woods when I woke up. I thought that maybe- ouch!" The woman seized her shoulders and pushed her into the wall, now adopting a threatening voice.

"Tell me the truth!"

"Hey!" Ashton and Sammy shouted as Phoenix looked alarmed.

"Now see here, missy, you let go of Phoenix or I'll have to get ugly!" Jesse added.

"Who are you?" Phoenix asked. The woman ignored the question.

"How did you find the blue box?" She demanded, softer but more dangerous.

"Blue box? I don't have a blue box! We're looking for the blue box, let go of me!"

"What do you mean?"

"I can show you if you just let go of me!" The woman dropped her hands and Phoenix led her back to the loos. She stopped at the last stall and pushed opened the door. "It's a bit of a surprise inside but-" The woman pushed past and stared.

"But this isn't...but that's impossible."

"But you can see, it isn't!"

"Where is he?"

"Where is who?"

"Where is he? Where is the Doctor?" Phoenix stared. She didn't know who it was this woman was talking about and yet... _The Doctor...The Doctor…_

Sammy asked, puzzled, "Doctor Who?"


	17. Chapter 17

**Hope you all enjoy this chapter! Full credit to the band Chameleon Circuit for the lyrics included from their song Traveling Man**

ECHOS OF A MELODY

The woman sighed and leaned against the console before speaking again. "I am Professor Riversong, and I'm looking for the man who calls himself the Doctor. He travels around in a blue telephone box, dreadful fashion sense, and has a chin big enough to poke you in the eye. I need to find him."

"Why?" Phoenix asked.

"Because...because I don't know very much about who he is but I know that I _have_ to find out more. I _have_ to find him but he is very hard to find. This is my only clue," she held out a blue notebook and Sammy gasped.

"That- that's exactly the color of the box!"

"He gave it to me. I know that for sure."

"Who are you looking for?" Ashton was starting to get annoyed being so out of the loop.

"The Doctor, keep up," Sammy snapped.

"I have a feeling this isn't the sort of man you can just call on," Jesse said grimly. Phoenix leaned forward and looked intently at Riversong.

"You're funny."

"So I've been told."

"No, I mean I can't figure you out at all. What you are or who you are."

"Neither can I," the woman said, sadly. They stood in silence for a short time, until Riversong seemed to come out of her thoughts and said, "Do you have any leads on him?"

"Nothing much," Sammy admitted, "Just...a blue box. I see it sometimes, in my dreams usually." Riversong nodded, idly flipping through her journal.

"What's that?" Phoenix peeked over at one of the pages which was blank except for eleven numbers in a row.

"I don't know. At first I thought it was a cipher of some sort. He left it there, I think." Phoenix looked at it then laughed.

"Don't you see?"

"See what?"

"The blue box! It's a telephone box!"

Riversong's eyes lit up, "Of course! The cheeky boy left me his number!"

"Well, are you going to call him?" Phoenix grinned, "Or should you lead him on a little longer?"

"Oh I haven't decided yet," she smiled. One of the soldiers barked that they were moving out. She winked at the four of them, "Get out of here. Before they want to question you again."

"But couldn't we have-"

"Until next time," she closed the door and the TARDIS revved to life.

"Damn!" Ashton swore, "We didn't get the number from her!"

"Language, young man! There is a child present," Jesse scolded.

"Phoenix…" Sammy said, slowly, "How did you know it was a phone box? I never said that." This caused Phoenix to looked alarmed.

"Oh! You never did. How - I don't know. Is it a phone box? I think it is. Maybe I was wrong…" she looked intently at the console, thinking hard. Then she straightened up, "The TARDIS is alerting me that you humans all need your sleep cycle again." Ashton was feeling rather tired, and Jesse was practically nodding off.

"What's going on?" Karmen appeared in the hall leading into the control room. They all looked at each other and Sammy sighed,

"I'm not explaining this one."

The humans went to sleep. Phoenix recounted their meeting of Riversong, and Karmen was a good friend and listened to all of Phoenix's rambling and backtracking as she told the story all wrong as children are prone to do.

"You should have gotten that phone number."

"I know. Wish I was quicker."

"You don't suppose she meant the Doctor man any harm?"

"No, I don't think so. I think she likes him. Like _likes_ him." Phoenix said with a meaningful nod. Karmen laughed.

"I hope she finds him then."

"Did you have a nice nap on the TARDIS?"

"Well... I guess. I still don't really know if I sleep or not. Like I lay down to rest but I can't tell if I'm really actually asleep."

"You must've slept somewhere for you to even know what sleep is supposed to feel like," Phoenix rationalized.

"Yeah...do you mind if I sleep out here like you?" She asked.

"Oh like a slumber party! Yes please!" Karmen darted away and returned in seconds holding a blanket and pillow and she quickly made herself comfortable on the floor near Phoenix. The TARDIS seemed uncomfortable with her so close to the console but nothing happened beyond a few beeps so Karmen settled there. Phoenix was nestled into her hammock and tossed her white Mary Jane shoes across the room and removed her blue headband. She began to shuffle through her box of pictures. There were more, and still she had no clue where they were coming from. And still the thought didn't really bother her much. At least now she recognized the boy with torn jeans in all the photos. At the bottom was a bit of paper with a few verses scrawled on it:

 _Traveling Man_

 _Such secrets to be told_

 _Alien man_

 _Out of his world_

 _With nothing left to lose_

 _Traveling Man_

 _Coming down to rescue you_

 _The Traveling Man will save the day_

 _The Traveling Man will keep you safe_

 _Even if he has to die five hundred and seven times_

 _The Traveling Man will save the day_

The words brought to mind the stars, drums, and a color so indescribable and wonderful. It was the color of a cool night full of stars, or the color of looking over a wide open field and running across for no particular reason until you are breathless. It was the color of an evening when you are in bed and falling asleep to the sound of familiar-ness. It was both a color of infinity and ending, vastness and closeness, danger and safety. Her eyes shone for a moment, an emotion jerked from her unwillingly but it gave way to a gentle peace.

In her hammock nest, the Phoenix curled up with these words in her hand and a memory in her head. Finally it was a memory she did not fear or run from. It was one, while hazy and dim, she latched onto. Listened to. Clung to.

"Phoenix?" It was Sammy, also holding her blankets, "I want to sleep out here."

"I'd like that, Sammy. It's a slumber party!" she said drowsily. Sammy smiled and settled down opposite Karmen. She couldn't remember when, but Ashton joined them as well and even Jesse dragged his mattress out from his room.

Ashton was the first to wake and saw Phoenix going up the stairs to the console, shoes squeaking. After a minute of coaxing himself out of bed, he joined her.

"Morning!" She said brightly.

"Morning," he yawned. Phoenix was busy polishing the switches and controls on the console. "Phoenix...can I ask you a few questions?"

"Sure!"

"How does this...work?"

"What, the TARDIS?"

"Yeah. I mean, how does time travel work?"

"Oh I haven't the slightest clue how time travel works but I can tell you a bit about the TARDIS. See, there's Time, right? Time isn't like how most people see it."

"It's not linear."

"Actually, it is linear. But it's also cyclical. It's both. Actually it's more like a big...ball? Yeah, sort of. But it's really all about how you arrange time. It's all moldable and malleable. Huh. Malleable. I like that word. Sounds kinda squishy. Anyway! Now when you're standing still on earth, you're not actually standing still. You're orbiting around the sun, and you're going around the axis of the earth, and all that. And Time is whizzing past you or you are moving through it. It's hard to determine, which is why humans have made it all line up. While time passes, one event to another, it also rotates like a sort of wheel. You could think of it kinda like...the orbit of the sun and the tilt of the earth, and the motion of the planets are Time. And then you standing on earth, you are a fixed point."

"Fixed point?"

"Things that can't be changed."

"Huh."

"You know what I said about orbits?"

"Yeah?"

"Forget it, it's a rubbish example. Time is more like...a Tapestry." Phoenix started to pace, "The thread are all the events which weave the big picture of time. You can follow the threads one event at time, only seeing one story in a straight line. But to really understand it, you have to step back. Look at the big picture that Time is weaving. Look at it out of order. Every thread is life, an event, a moment. And they're woven together in ways no one can see until they step back and see how delicately the weaver had to work to arrange their life like how it is and will be. When you look at it too close it just looks like a big tangled mess."

"But what about fixed points?"

"Oh, so that's like a thread that if you removed it, the whole Tapestry would fall apart. Threads are always being snapped and tied back on the Tapestry. That's why if you squash a butterfly a million years ago, odds are that you won't change the outcome of a political election. Because the thread will just be reconnected and the tear in space and time is easily repaired. But some things are really important threads and if they are damaged, it rips the whole thing apart."

"I haven't read any books where it's explained like that…"

"That's because this is real time travel, not science fiction!" Phoenix said hotly.

"So how does the TARDIS work in this?"

"Imagine...imagine a city. Well, first imagine all the moments of you life. Every single one. The moments where you are still, the moments when you move, the moments when you sleep, the moments when you wake. The ones when you're giving a speech or when you're buying crisps at a store. All moments, every single one of them, spread out around you like a city. A great big city of your life, spread out around you not in a row chronologically. Now think even bigger. Every single moment of every single life, every single event. The city of Time. All Time, every Time. And the TARDIS is like the tube, running through that city. And so you can get on and get off at your stops, and visit whatever part of the city you please. That is what the TARDIS is. It's the tube of time." Ashton digested this all in awed silence.

"She can do all that?"

"That and more!" Phoenix grinned.

"Wow. Just...just wow."

"I like talking to you, you're good at listening!"

"But, how do you know if something is a fixed point?" At this, Phoenix frowned a little.

"I don't know exactly...I suppose we'll find out when we come to one." Sammy began to stir, and Karmen materialized nearby, so Ashton didn't get to ask his next question. He was a little afraid to ask. It was nearly an hour later while they were all eating scrambled eggs and toast, compliments of Jesse, when any mention of time travel came back up.

"I've been meaning to ask you, Phoenix," Jesse said between bites, "If we're allowed to visit our own pasts?"

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?"

"Well, what would you do if you saw another one of you walking up to you?"

"Probably think I was going mad," Jesse admitted, "At least, old me would. Old me didn't know all of this existed." He gestured vaguely to the TARDIS.

"Exactly. You humans do that sort of thing."

"Have you ever gone back in time to meet yourself, Phoenix?"

"No, I didn't think that was a good idea. Who knows what kind of trouble _two_ Phoenixes could get into!"

"But if you went back in time, you could find out where you came from! Who your parents are!"

"But I'd have to know where I was trying to go," Phoenix said softly, "The biggest holes in the TARDIS map are the ones that involve me. There's also some kind of safety protocol preventing me from visiting my own timeline anyway." She looked a little wistfully at the screen.

"So, then we can't go visit Jesse's daughter?" Karmen asked from her corner. Everyone turned to Jess, and he looked embarrassed,

"I had only mentioned it to Karmen as a sort of foolish hope. I didn't think-"

"Could we, Phoenix?" Sammy asked immediately.

"Well...maybe. I'm not really sure. It would have to be at a time when there's no chance of you running into past you...but even still, it can be dangerous. I really would like to meet your daughter, Jesse."

"It's alright, I know you would."

No more was said of this matter until a few misadventures later. While everyone else slept, Jesse sat at the TARDIS door, legs dangling into space and drinking his tea. Phoenix soon joined him.

"Jesse. How did your daughter die?"

"I don't recall ever telling you she was dead."

"No, but you asked me about keeping people from dying and how you wanted to visit her...so you didn't have to." Phoenix swung her legs back and forth.

"It was an accident. She was in the car with her friend, and her friend's mum was driving. They'd been to see a movie and so it was late. Other driver hit them head on, he'd had a seizure and blacked out. It lacerated her friend's liver, broke her mum's arm, and killed Natalie."

"Poor Jesse…" She hugged him as he looked sadly at the stars surrounding them.

"It wasn't anyone's fault. Just one of those things…"

"What about Natalie's mother?"

"Oh...we separated a year afterwards."

"Separated?"

"Yes, we stopped living together. It was too much work and money for us to file for divorce, but we decided that in all but law we were finished."

"I don't understand, I thought you loved her!"

"I did. But sometimes...when one love is broken, it takes a toll on your other loves. You need a thicker love to get you through and Sarah and I didn't have what it took." They were silent for a time until Phoenix said,

"Maybe we could save Natalie. She could come with us!" Jesse chuckled sadly,

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"But...we can change time. That's what makes it so amazing."

"No. You are very clever, impossible child. But even you must know that there are endings. And we can't change all the endings. If I didn't say goodbye to her then, I'd have to say goodbye sometime later. Goodbyes never get easier the longer you wait. Besides, you already said it was dangerous to go back to my own past, nevermind what would happen if we changed something like that."

"Are you sure? We could just try." Phoenix said hopefully.

"I heard you talking to Ashton, we can't rip up the Tapestry of Time. If I could, I'd just like to see her once before she left. I didn't know that was the last time I'd see her walk out the door...never said a real goodbye." Phoenix thought hard about this.

"Maybe we can fix that."

"Really?"

"Not now. It isn't the right time. But soon." She hugged him again, and Jesse (who knew better than to try to get a straight answer from the Phoenix) hugged her back.


	18. Chapter 18

Sorry it's been a while since I've updated. I was having trouble with this part but writer's block was finally overcome. Enjoy!

A SKATE PARK IN SWEDEN

One would think that with all the sci-fi novels Ashton read, he would have known better than to mess with a fixed point in time. Granted, he didn't know it was fixed, but he'd just had a long conversation with the little Timelord and should've realized the toll it would have on the Tapestry of Time. Unfortunately, people are very good at subconsciously twisting words to mean what they want them to.

"Phoenix, can I pick the next place we go?" He asked, after a very relaxing trip to Hawaii.

"Sure," she smiled. Phoenix had forgotten that Timelords can sunburn and was very red and peeling around her nose.

"My house. March 15, 2020."

"That's very specific. Why do you want to go to your house seven years before we picked you up?"

"I broke my favorite skateboard that day, I want to steal it from past me so that it never breaks." Ashton shrugged, "Is that allowed?"

"Hmm…" Phoenix pondered, "I don't know...it's probably harmless. But you'd have to leave a different skateboard so past you still has one. Better! We can just replicate it with the TARDIS replicator thing!"

"We have one of those?"

"Ooo! We should try and replicate me!" Karmen's voice came from the across the room.

"How about no? I can't have two of you trying to steal my hat-" he stopped short as his beanie disappeared from his head and Karmen appeared two feet away unabashedly holding it.

"It can't replicate living life forms. I tried to replicate a kitten because I wanted a kitten but I didn't want to take him away from his mother. It didn't work, so I don't have a kitten. But once I replicated a hundred ice cream sandwiches!"

"Is that why we never have to go grocery shopping? You just keep replicating the food?"

"Yes. But only the good food. That's why there's no more broccoli after Jesse made us eat some. Because who wants to eat broccoli, that's grown up food."

"Because it's good for you, young lady!" Came Jesse's voice from the kitchen, "And you need it to grow. No replicating ice cream sandwiches."

"Hmph!"

Phoenix entered the coordinates to the time and place Ashton wanted to visit so badly and when they thumped to a halt he quickly moved toward the door.

"Wait! You can't just go charging out, we need to be careful!"

"I'll be careful! I'm just going into the house and out. I remember this day, no one was in the house at this time. I was down at the skate park and my parents were at work." Suddenly, something toward the back of the TARDIS started beeping.

"Oh no...low power," Phoenix raced toward the source of the noise. Ashton ducked out the door. They had landed several houses down from his, disguised as an electrical box. He scowled when he saw Sammy had followed him.

"I can manage getting a skateboard."

"I'm sure you can," she replied coolly, "Lead the way." He muttered something under his breath then started up the block. Sammy tried the front door, which was locked. Ashton was already headed down the steep path to the back garden. He kept going, out the back, down an incline and-

"Are you _mad?_ " Sammy hissed and pulled him back. He was mere yards from the skate park, hiding behind a few trees. They could hear the sound of wheels and someone skidding to a halt.

"What was that? Need some training wheels?" A female voice teased. "Shut up," another voice grumbled. Sammy was torn between laughing at the sound of prepubescent Ashton and panic at the idea that they were so close to his past self. Future Ashton beside her took a step forward.

"Stop it," she muttered, "What are you thinking? Let's get the board go, you said it was inside!" He didn't reply. "I knew it. You didn't want a skateboard. What are you playing at?" Ashton still didn't respond, his eyes were fixed on a point slightly above the trees as if he was waiting. Sammy could see between the branches glimpses of the two people; Ashton looked much the same but with no rips in his jeans and shorter hair. The girl...she was older, but the two looked so similar. She had the same upturned nose, sharp jaw, dark hair (though the ends were green), and general attitude of indignation and rebellion. Before Sammy could say anything, Ashton shot past her moving faster than she thought possible. She let out a startled cry and charged after him but tripped.

It happened so quickly. For a split second, both Ashtons looked at each other. The girl began to form words but before any sound escaped her lips, he tackled her to the ground, rolling away. Sammy hit the uneven concrete hard, spots appearing in her vision.

Then the scream.

Something big had landed somewhere above her. The sound it made shook the trees and chilled Sammy's blood. She froze, not wanting to see what had made that awful shriek, closing her eyes tightly. It sniffed nearby, trotting a few steps closer. Sammy closed her eyes tighter, refusing to look. Then it snarled, raising the on her arms and neck, and bounding away. She didn't move until she heard the voice of young Ashton asking nervously,

"Hey...hey are you ok?"

Sammy sat up. Young Ashton was squatting a few feet away, looking very rattled.

"I'm fine. What- what happened?"

"There was this...thing. I don't know. Where- who was that boy?"

"I don't know," she lied, "What boy?"

"The one who-" he stopped. Phoenix and Jesse came running toward them, looking panicked.

"We heard- we heard the noise," Jesse puffed.

"Where is Ashton? Where's-" Phoenix stopped short, looking from young Ashton to a long set of claw marks on the cement and back again. "Oh...oh. That's not good."

Ashton was still running, dragging Adele with him. They stumbled farther and farther into the woods, farther and farther away from It. Finally they halted, both leaning against a tree completely winded. Adele was the first to speak. She look a long look at him and gasped,

"What the _hell_ was that? And who the hell are you?"

"You know me," he said.

"But- how?"

"Nevermind. You're safe now."

"Safe?"

"There you are!" Phoenix was running through the fallen leaves towards them, looking angry. Sammy trotted behind her. "You said you were getting a skateboard!"

"I-"

"Who are they?" Adele demanded.

"You _lied_! That's mean, why did you lie to me?" Phoenix stamped her foot and burst into tears. "You've ruined everything!"

"What is she talking about?" Adele looked at Ashton.

"I...I'm sorry Phoenix! But- I had to-"

"You don't know what you've done!" Phoenix shrieked, glaring up at him. Ashton took a step back. Her eyes- had then been _gold_ for a moment?

"Explain," Sammy said coldly, hands still smarting from where she'd caught herself on the cement.

"Ok, ok. This-" he gestured to Adele, "Is my sister. And today, seven years ago, that _thing_ killed her." His words were greeted with silence.

"What?" Adele said quietly.

"So...so I had to." He almost whispered.

"Do you know what you've just done? This is a fixed point!" Phoenix said angrily, no longer sounding childish. The horrible sound came again, startlingly close.

"We need to run, the TARDIS," Sammy said, voice faltering.

"The power is low."

"We can still hide in it!" Sammy exclaimed. Phoenix glared at Ashton again. He looked away. The roar came again. They all took off running. Ashton led them, he knew the forest well. If they looped around the back of the park they could make it to the house. They all skidded to a halt when they heard something crashing through the undergrowth several hundred feet ahead but the trees were too dense to see.

"What is it?" Adele whispered.

"Nasty species...you call them Wendigos."

" _What?"_

"They're aliens from a planet called Grieza," Phoenix continued as if reading from a textbook, "They hunt alone, usually. When they pick up a scent, they don't stop until the thing they're hunting is dead." She looked sadly at Adele, "It picked up your scent."

"It's gone," Ashton muttered, "Come on!" They ran. Loping footsteps thudded behind them. They ran faster, through the skate park and up toward the house, Phoenix leading the way and Sammy right behind. Young Ashton was nowhere to be made it to the gate, Ashton still pulling Adele by the hand, and ran to the TARDIS. Phoenix and Sammy ran inside. Adele stopped just short, staring at the box which had dropped its camouflage and was made of many colors again.

"Come on! It's coming!" "Ashton."

"Yeah?"

"I died here?"

"You were supposed to, but I fixed that! Time travel. Like that book you were reading, remember?" He glanced down. Their two boards and the paperback book she'd folded the cover of were still there, just like they had been seven years ago. "I read it a lot after...but then I found out it's real. And I could fix it." Adele looked at him, then back down the street. The roar carried to their ears. "Come on!"

His sister sighed. Then she grabbed him by the shoulders and hugged him.

"You're saying I was supposed to die?"

"Yes."

"And you came back in time to stop that from happening? Even though this already happened, and its fixed?"

"Yes."

"In my book, remember what happens with fixed points?"

"Time and space unravel. But this isn't like that, that was just a book!" Even as he said it, she could tell he wasn't so sure.

"I'm sorry." With a shove, she pushed Ashton backwards into the TARDIS then held the door.

"Adele - what are you doing?! Get inside! It can't get in!" The creature roared again. Through the translucent glass, Ashton could see her form silhouetted and a larger one with burning eyes coming closer. Another roar. The TARDIS whirred to life, and Ashton continued to plead with Adele but he only heard another scream from the creature before they were gone.

Ashton spoke very little the next few days. They parked in Cardiff to recharge the TARDIS, and no one pressed him. Phoenix seemed to forgive him for lying to her. Jesse sat down next him on the fourth day and waited. After a while Ashton said,

"No one believed me. Of course they wouldn't believe it was huge monster with glowing eyes, seven feet tall. In the end, they decided it was a bear, which is stupid because bears had never been seen in those woods. People just wanted an explanation. I had started to think I had just imagined it until you all showed up."

"Well, I can't blame you. It's very tempting, all this power and ability we got."

"Adele always was smarter than me."

"I'll tell you a secret, son. Most women are." They both chuckled.

"I guess she made her choice...and I guess I knew that it wouldn't work but…"

"You couldn't live with yourself if you didn't at least try?"

"Yeah."

"Hm. Well, you get some rest and then tomorrow we'll start fresh. Go somewhere nice. Things will get better, I promise."

"Ok." He said glumly. But for some reason, for the first he believed that Jesse might be right.


	19. Chapter 19

**Alright, friends. We move towards the climax! I've had the story pretty well planned out up to this point and a few chapters beyond but then I'm in uncharted territory. I'd appreciate any feedback, or any suggestions, or any particular direction you'd like the story to move in (no promises though!) As always, hope you enjoy!**

ASHES, ASHES WE ALL FALL DOWN

The thread of fate was drawing her closer and closer to something, Phoenix knew it. Of course, people rarely met by fate because that was the same as saying it was an accident or a coincidence and the universe is rarely so lazy. No, the threads of Time were drawing them closer. Time bound everyone together in some way. It was what had brought all her companions together. Who knew when their threads would run out and be woven in different directions. It was drawing her closer to something but what it was...who knew that, either?

This string felt thicker. It felt heavier. And how she even knew it existed was beyond her. But it was coming. It was hard to explain this to her friends, so she didn't try. It was hard even to explain it to herself. All of time and space didn't come with an instruction manual or a warning label. As the string drew tighter, the more she began to remember. It was at night, or at what the humans aboard called night. She and Karmen sat up together, still not used to this sleeping thing.

"Do you ever have times when you remember and don't want to?" She asked the Angel.

"Yes. Sometimes."

"Like what?"

"I remember when I was human."

"You were human?" Phoenix looked puzzled.

"I think I was. You know how the Daleks were once one thing and now they're another?"

"Yes," Phoenix leaned back.

"I think the Angels are the same. They were once one thing...and now they're not. And I didn't want to be one. I wanted to be able to touch another person. I didn't want to be stone." They sat in silence.

"Do you think if I closed my eyes and you held my hand you could feel it?" she suddenly asked. Karmen thought for a moment.

"Maybe I could."

Phoenix closed her eyes and reached out. A moment later, she felt Karmen's stone cold hand. It hadn't worked. Karmen sighed.

"I'm sorry, Karmen."

"Do you ever remember things that make sense?" she abruptly changed the subject.

"I - sometimes. I think so."

"Do you remember Gallifrey? You talk about it a lot."

"I do?"

"In your sleep."

"Oh...not really. I just know it's a planet. And I think it's the one I'm from. But every time I look it up in the TARDIS database, it just says _error_. I think the TARDIS is hiding something from me." Phoenix glared at the console. The TARDIS buzzed mournfully.

"What else?"

"Just sometimes I remember...things. Little moments of...just…" she paused then said quietly, "I know I'm going to meet someone important soon. I don't know who, or when. But soon. And I don't know if that's good."

"It's ok, Phoenix. We'll all be there."

"That's just it...I don't know if you will be."

"Oh. Well, we're here now." Phoenix smiled a little at that and leaned onto Karmen's shoulder, sleepily, and they watched the stars go by as they drifted through space.

Phoenix steered them back toward Earth a few days later. Sammy wanted her headphones because the ones she was borrowing from Ashton broke, and so naturally they flew two billion light years across the galaxy to get them. Upon landing in the south side of London, they stepped out of the TARDIS which had become a red telephone booth in a group of others.

"While we're here, I could go for some fish and chips," Jesse said cheerfully.

"That sounds good. I'd like to see what those are," Karmen said, after vanishing several pigeons.

"You coming with us, Phoenix?" Sammy asked as she and Ashton began to walk toward the tube.

"No...I think I'll stay with Karmen." She watched them go off, hand in hand, "Karmen? Did Sammy and Ashton used to walk holding hands?" Karmen was too far away to hear, following Jesse. Phoenix sighed. She knew to humans, hand-holding across genders was usually significant and wanted to look it up in the database. As she approached the telephone booths, trying to remember which one was hers, she noticed one in the back that was different from the rest. It was blue and-

 _Come back, please-_

 _I have to go._

 _Flying...leaving...gone._

It read Police Box Public Call across the top.

 _Fire, everything was burning._

 _Exterminate. Exterminate._

 _Lies._

That color...it was always in a corner of her mind, now here it was in front of her.

 _Where were you?_

She moved closer. Police Box Public Call. Why were those words so...so sad? She reached out and touched the wood. Pull to open. So she did.

She was not surprised to find it bigger on the inside. Phoenix walked right up to the console in the center and it reacted to her touch like it remembered her.

 _Bare, dusty ground. Empty. But still she waited, still she knew he must come back._

A man with grizzled hair and a cross posture was looking through one of the bookshelves in the room, mumbling to himself, his back to her.

 _Please don't turn around,_ something inside her begged, _Please don't._

When he did they locked eyes, and both froze as if they were Angels. She was struck by his differences and he by her same-ness. He had gray hair, but curlier than last time, his eyebrows seemed to cut the air, and his clothes were different. And his eyes- they were so full of grief. They didn't move, they took in everything and Phoenix felt a word come to her lips. She pushed it down with everything she had and yet it still burst from her mouth.

"Papa?"

He didn't move, only stared. The book in his hand fell to the ground with a thump.

"Papa." She said with more confidence this time. But as she did-

 _Pain. Blinding pain, so much she couldn't see, screaming, on the ground-_

 _I'm sorry, I lied._

The memories rushed in and the Phoenix burned.

She burned in memory, the most painful fire there is. The man blurred out of focus, whatever he was saying or not saying was lost in the roars of a long past war in her head. The fire would not be put out and she turned and fled. The Phoenix forgot her friends, forgot her logic, sense, forgot everything except the need to run and never stop. She raced to the TARDIS, slammed the door, punched the console and forced it to take off despite its protests. She flew and flew galaxies away, forcing the TARDIS to go faster and faster until it finally landed three years ahead of where she'd left and halfway across the globe.

The TARDIS shuddered to halt. She couldn't go any farther, and shut down. As the lights flickered out, Phoenix had never felt so alone in the world. She fell down at the base of the console, more scared than she'd could remember. The memories were coming, piecing back together, and she recoiled from their sharp edge. With a sob, she reached for the box under the console, hoping maybe there was a picture for her but she found nothing save the ones already there. Screaming in frustration, she threw the box aside and ran out the door.

She had landed on a mountain top overlooking a small village in what appeared to be the Himalayas. This was no comfort as it was freezing cold and she turned back only to see the TARDIS had taken the shape of a blue Police Call Box. Flying into a true rage at this final insult, the tiny Timelord kicked, spit, hit, punched, screamed and pounded the TARDIS until she collapsed into a heap at the base.

 _Who was that man?_

 ** _You know who he was, you said it yourself_**

 _No! No I don't!_

 ** _You know who he is._**

 _He CAN'T be him, he can't be-_

 _ **You know him.** _

_No I DON'T! Leave me alone!_

She would have stayed there, at the base of the box, near freezing to death if a few villagers hadn't come across her and taken her to their village. The child lay out cold for two days, constantly tossing and muttering in her sleep.

She was dreaming of Gallifrey.


	20. Chapter 20

INTERLUDE

 _He knew what was to be done. It was a mercy, at least that's what he told himself. It wasn't really. Nice phrases like "greater good" were there to make you feel better, empty words to try and console yourself in the deafening silence of your sins._

 _He stood in the doorway and watched his children sleep. Just yesterday they'd been playing at war, shrieking they'd killed thousands of Daleks with their bare hands. What kind of a world was that for a child? A world of unadulterated for another race? A justified hatred, but hate nonetheless. He knew too well what hate did to a person._

 _No, he would rather lose them than have them grow up full of such hate. So he resolved to do it. He had failed them. Massively failed them. He was giving them a second chance, a mercy._

' _That's right. A mercy. Keep telling yourself that,' a voice sneered at him in the back of his head. It had been so much easier to justify everything before, why was he suddenly afraid? Why was he suddenly seeing himself for what he really was? A coward. A traitor. A murderer._

" _Phoenix," he said gently, "The war...we are losing the war." She looked at him with her big eyes._

 _No, it wasn't a mercy. This was just a guilty man trying to ease his conscience._

" _Are we going to die? Will the Daleks kill us like they killed Orator?" She asked with such calm innocence._

" _No. Because I know a way to protect you."_

 _Protect her? Such lies. Protecting himself, more like it. Trying to remove at least a little of the crushing guilt that was going to drive him mad._

" _Will it hurt?"_

" _No." In the TARDIS, it felt so much harder to lie._

" _What is that thing?"_

" _It's what's going to keep you safe."_

" _What's it do?"_

" _Do you trust me?" He asked, his voice catching but the child still nodded. Children, so trusting. He had her sit down in a chair. He hesitated, and she looked back up at him. "Phoenix...do you know that I love you?"_

" _Yes papa."_

 _You could still stop now. Just forget the plan, forget the war. Run away._

" _I love you, I promise." He leaned over and kissed her head._

 _The program would rewrite every cell in her body, every memory in her mind. It would make her entirely human. And she would remember nothing of him. Nothing of who she was, where she was from, who loved her or what he had done. It took only moments before she began to scream in pain, trying to wrench herself away. He held her firm, whispering over and over again I'm sorry, I'm so sorry._

" _Papa please make it stop! Stop it! Stop it now!" Her face contorted in pain, eyes closed tightly._

 _He couldn't let go._

 _This is how it had to be._

 _His face was wet, shirt damp. Why was she still crying? But no, she was unconscious and that he was the one sobbing. He looked down at her, she looked much the same, but when he listened carefully, only the sound of a single heart beat in her chest. He pushed the hair back from her face and picked up the watch nearby, which was now closed tight._

 _If he had heeded his own warning and made his hearts hard, there would have been no chance for her ever to come back, he would've taken that watch and hidden it somewhere else. But as he carried her to the second TARDIS and placed her on the floor with a pillow behind her head, he tucked the watch in her pocket. He stepped out and watched the time machine, not nearly as good as his but probably more reliable, vanish._

' _I must forget,' he told himself, 'I have to forget because remembering might just kill me.'_

RAJ

It had been there for weeks, and no one but Raj seemed to notice it. He had thought at first it was some new kind of modern art display or something. He'd approached it several times and touched it and the energy which hummed from within made him doubt it was just a sculpture by some strange modern artist. It was box made of frosted translucent glass of hundreds of colors. The pieces were all joined together to form a pattern that almost looked like what wind would be if it was visible. Into one side of the box was inlaid the pattern of a firebird bursting from the ashes and on the other was a wounded griffin. dripping blood from several wounds. He studied these figures, they were free of the grime which covered everything in New Delhi and so he loved to look at them.

There was beauty in his country, a lot of it. But not for him. He was untouchable, a disease only allowed to survive because he hadn't caused too much trouble. He was a mutated cell, not quite cancerous. His world was looking at the children parents had left for dead, the pimps who blinded and maimed girls so they'd make more money begging, dogs fighting among the starving for a scrap of bread, lepers rotting in train stations. Beauty was few and far between in Raj's world so he went to this box every day.

About a month after the appearance of the box, Raj noticed the girl. She was so obviously out of place he wondered why more people weren't looking at her. Her hair was red, her clothes distinctly British, and she was all alone sitting at the base of the box, looking glum. Occasionally she'd scuff her white shoes on the ground in front of her but mostly she looked out not really seeing anything. Two days after seeing her consistently there, he had the courage to go up to her. Usually he approached strangers, especially Westerners, to get money. But this little girl clearly didn't have any and he didn't really care about it so much today.

"Hello? Little girl?" he asked in his heavily accented English. She didn't look at him, he wasn't even sure she saw him. "Hello?" he waved a hand in front of her eyes. She lifted her head and turned toward him.

"Who are you?"

He was surprised to hear her speak Hindustani so well. "I am no one. Who are you?"

"No one." She replied. They sat in silence for a minute.

"Do you know what the box is?" Raj asked.

"Oh, she's my TARDIS."

"Yours?"

"Yes, mine. But she's resting right now," Phoenix sighed, sadly.

"You are alone here?"

"Yes."

"How did you get here?"

"I flew," she scuffed her shoe on the ground.

"Where from?"

"Gallifrey." Raj didn't know much about geography so he assumed it was a country or a city he just hadn't heard of. They sat in silence until she looked over at him, really seeing him for the first time. "What happened to your leg?"

"What, this one?" Raj awkwardly extended his left leg. It was mangled, like it had been stuck through a meat grinder but not completely and was what everyone saw when they looked at him though they hardly ever said anything about it. Once in a while someone would shout "cripple" but no one ever asked how he'd hurt it.

"No, I mean that one," she pointed to his right leg where he had the clear tattoo of a lotus on his ankle.

"Oh. That's so they can keep track of me."

"Who?"

"Them. The men who did this," he gestured to his left leg.

"Someone did that to you?" She said, so alarmed she forgot to look glum for a minute.

"Yes. When I was six...the men, they take a rock and break my leg. Then they bind it backwards so it will not heal right."

"Did they do it to keep you safe?"

"What? No, they do it so I make more money begging for them."

"Do you still beg for them?"

"Yes. I do. They feed me a little when I bring a lot. But I am not a cute kid anymore. So I do not make so much money." He rubbed his leg then tucked it back under him, "This tattoo, it so they know who I belong to." The girl looked at him for a moment, then said,

"I am the Phoenix."

"Oh. I am Raj."

"I'm very long ways away from home, and I don't think I can ever go back and I'm lonely," she added, hiding halfway behind her hair.

"I can see you're a long way from home."

"Why?" she suddenly looked alarmed, "I look human!"

"Yes...but I mean…" he gestured to her, "You not from around here."

"Oh you mean my hair. Yes, it's a little different…" Raj's hand shot out and grabbed a lock of it. He'd clearly been wanting to do this since he'd sat down. Phoenix hardly noticed, turned to look at him and said, "I like you, Raj. Would you like to come inside my TARDIS?"


	21. Chapter 21

A PICTURE OF HOME

Sammy sat at her desk again, watching the people down on the street below. She was trying to find a new face to sketch. All of her drawings were coming up looking like the same red haired girl. She wished she could remember why.

"Knock knock, Madame Illustrator," Ashton said softly as he entered holding a tray of tea, "You've been at this for hours. How's it coming?"

"Slowly," she sighed and took the mug. He looked down at her drawings.

"Huh. Have you used a similar design before? I feel like they're familiar…"

"So do I. I can't figure out why. It's bothering me." They both looked at her sketches for a few minutes until Ashton shrugged,

"Maybe it's someone we both saw at one point in the store or something." He kissed her on the cheek and left her to work. Sammy kept staring at the drawings. For some reason it made her think of when she and Ashton had first met. Their first date had been shopping in the south side of London, and that had been nearly four years ago. Everyone had said they were too young, at twenty, to get married.

They would be celebrating their first year wedding anniversary in a few days and Sammy would have had her job as a children's book illustrator for three years a week later.

Why was there something about that that made her feel sad? She'd been having those dreams again. She'd drawn out a couple of them, and they made no sense. Stars. Time. And always the same firebird. She hadn't told Ashton.

"Do you ever feel like there's part of your life sort of...missing?" she asked him later that day.

"Is this you saying you want kids?" Ashton said, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, "Because I don't know if I'm ready for that."

"No! No. Goodness no. Just...like there's something missing from your memories? Like something you should remember but can't?"

Ashton waited a moment before answering, "I dunno. Maybe...but not like anything major. Are you doing okay, Sam?" he looked a little concerned.

"I'm doing fine."

"None of your dreams?"

"No...well not any that make sense." He took her hand for a moment then said,

"You know I want you to tell me these things."

"I know…"

"Let's talk about something else. I thought we could take a trip to Paris for our anniversary, just for a weekend. Would you like that?" Sammy pretended to be interested in Paris for a little while before withdrawing to her room. On her desk was a polaroid she hadn't taken. It was of an old man and old woman sitting in a parlor together. The woman was a complete stranger but the man...there was an address on the bottom. She turned it over. Message was written on the back.

 _Some friends from long ago…_


	22. Chapter 22

LOVE IS PATIENT

Muriel woke up early, like she usually did, and looked over at her husband. He was still sleeping. She smiled and went into the bathroom. He'd probably sleep all day if she didn't make him wake up. She teased him, saying how he'd never manage without her and he quickly admitted that was true.

"What did you do before you met me, then?" she laughed.

"Honestly, my dear, I don't know."

Unfortunately that statement was sometimes true. He would have lapses in memory now and again, sometimes thinking his daughter (who had died years ago) was in the house or forgetting what he was doing and becoming distressed when he went on the train alone. There were several years, the ones right before he'd met her, where he remembered almost nothing.

Muriel washed her face then returned to their room.

"Rise and shine, soldier." she shook Jesse gently.

"Mmm, yes ma'am," he said groggily and opened his eyes. Muriel helped him pull back the covers and sit up, then she heaved him to his feet and settled him in his wheelchair and pushed him into the kitchen for breakfast.

He'd been in his chair for several years after he had a bad fall and damaged his spine. Muriel had heard and rushed to the hospital and after he mostly recovered, they became more than friends. Neither of them had any living family and the fall made them both realize who it was they cared the most for. Romance was for the youth, they always said, but why couldn't they be old and happy?

"We should go for a walk today."

"Eat your toast," Muriel said.

"The bakery will survive without you for a day."

"Hmmm. Maybe I'll get off early."

"Oh fine. But I'll be bored all day and that means I'll end up eating every sweet in the house."

"You will not!" she playfully smacked him on the top of his head, then kissed him and left for work. As Jesse watched her go, noticed a young woman watching their house. About late twenties, oversized sweater, messy blonde hair, and...somehow very familiar. They made eye contact for a moment. Jesse drew back from the window, heart pounding. What...why did she look so familiar? He'd never seen her before, he couldn't have. When he turned back, the girl was gone.

LOVE IS BLIND

"Karmen?"

"Yes, Arthur?"

"Are you real?" Arthur Whittaker sat cross legged under a tree in the park, his cane beside him and his dog Lancelot nearby. He felt in the direction of the voice.

"Yes I'm real."

"Are you sure? No one seems to be able to see you. And I can't see you because I literally can't see so it's a little hard to know if you're real or not when all I hear is a voice."

"You've touched my hand before."

"Not for longer than a second. You're very adverse to that."

"If I'm not real, why do you still talk to me?"

"I never said you weren't real. I just asked if you are." He fiddled with his shoelaces like he did when he was bored. His mum would only let him go to the park near their house by himself and he'd spent so much time there he knew every blade of grass. He'd been bored silly until Karmen showed up. They could talk for hours and so they kept meeting in the park and just talked. But since Arthur was blind, he had no idea if Karmen was real and the one time his mother had come to the park he'd tried to introduce her but she had laughed and said there was no one there. Karmen had been talking to him moments before, so there was no way she could have just disappeared that quickly.

"No. I am real."

"Prove it!"

"How?"

"Let me feel your face. The only way I can see what a person looks like is by feeling their face."

"A-alright…" she sounded nervous but when he stretched out his hand, it came into contact with a small, soft hand. Karmen let out a little gasp of delight. "It's never done that before!"

"Done what?"

"Oh - nothing. Just -" she guided his hand up to her face and he felt her features, trying to study them.

"So you are real. Good, I was starting to think I was crazy." Karmen didn't speak for a few minutes and when she did, her voice shook with emotion.

"I'm really glad you're my friend, Arthur." He brushed away a single tear from her eye.

"Me too, Karmen. What's so sad?"

"Nothing. I'm just happy."


	23. Chapter 23

THE FRAILTY OF THE HUMAN CONDITION

In the back alley behind a florist and a spice trader sat a box. It was nothing remarkable, about as tall as a man and a little wider than one and a heavy canvas sheet hung over it. Behind the box was a series of colorful cloth strung across a laundry line. The different scraps fluttered in the slight breeze from motorcycles and cars in the street beyond but was just far enough back to muffle most of the noise. Behind the curtains of blue and gold and green sat two children, but they were no longer exactly children, nor teenagers, and certainly not adults. They sat comfortably on cushions, playing chess with a chipped board and used part of an old can for one of the knights since he was missing.

"Check," the boy said proudly, crossing his skinny arms.

"Checkmate," the girl said smugly. The boy groaned in frustration and the girl laughed, "You're getting better, you almost had me that time."

"How are you so good at chess? You're rubbish at every other game."

"That's not true!"

"You trip over the ball when we play football. You know this." Their banter continued. Raj, though dusty, was in much better health than when they had first met. Phoenix was no longer wearing her accustomed skirt and blouse but had traded it for a blue langa davani which Raj had procured for her (probably by stealing.)

They went into the box to sleep, and when it was too hot. The strangeness of it overwhelmed him when he first saw it. But he began to accept how impossible it was. He knew the box held many more secrets but Phoenix would not tell him. Phoenix would not tell him a lot of things.

Raj looked up at the mobiles they had fashioned out of glass and string and smiled at how they caught the light. The small place was full of color and sheltered from the outside. He felt safe. He had never felt safe before.

"Raj, would you tell me a story?"

"Which one?"

"The one about the stupid rajah and the clever monkey. I like that one." Phoenix settled back on her cushion. And so Raj obliged her with the story and when he finished he asked,

"Now will you tell me one?"

"What one?"

"The one about the girl born on the dying star who refuses to tell her real name. The one about the girl who ran away and will not say from who."

"No. I don't know that story."

"You do. That is you." Raj insisted.

"It is not a very good story and I don't want to tell," Phoenix twisted a curl around her finger. They were silent, for there was nothing left to say. Then Phoenix asked, "What do you think I am, Raj?"

"Like I say. Girl from a dying star. A girl who came from outer space, and who came here because she is lonely."

"Yes...I am lonely."

"Why is that? I am here, no?"

"You are. But everyone else is gone, everyone from my home, everyone I ever knew. And the person I love broke my trust."

"Did this person you love hurt you?"

"Yes…"

Raj propped himself up on his elbow, "I must tell you another story. I told you my leg was broken by the gang who took me. This is a lie. It was my mother who broke it and twisted it."

"What? But - why?"

"Our village, it is very close to Pakistan. There is always war there, always fighting about borders. But one time, men came through and start taking every boy they can find. This happens sometimes, but then terrorists move into the village and make camp. Every day they take more children to fight for them. My father kept me and my family safe. Then one day, he leaves and he does not come back. My mother is afraid the men will come take me. So she wakes me up in the middle of the night. She bends my leg in a way I do not like, I try to move it back but she tells me to be still. Then she hits it with a big rock and it breaks. When the men come in the next day, they do not take me because I am a cripple now."

"Oh…"

"But my leg does not heal. It mends, twisted. And then there is an even bigger fight and the village burns. I hide, and when it is over, there is no one left. Nothing but ashes and bodies." Raj told this all matter-of-factly to Phoenix, whose eyes grew big, "For long time, I hated my mother. I hated her because when I get to city, I am taken by a gang. I hate my mother because I cannot get a job because I cannot walk. I hate her most of all because even though she does this to me, our village still burns and she still dies." Phoenix was silent for a time, digesting this.

"If you could see your mother again, would you be angry?"

Raj considered this, "Maybe. I do not know. But I think not. I understand now, why she did this. Even if it is wrong. Love is...dangerous. It is strong. Too strong, too...thick. It would take time for me to trust her again. She broke my trust like that," he snapped his fingers, "It would take longer to build it back. But I miss her." Phoenix looked up at the patch of sky they could see in their alley. In her time there, he had been patient. Never pressed her, never questioned her.

"Thank you, Raj."

"What for?"

"I don't know. Everything."

"But I haven't done anything." She kissed him on the cheek.

"Thank you anyway. Would you like to step into my TARDIS? She can fly, see. And she's been very cross that I haven't gone anywhere in a while."

"We are going to the stars?" His eyes lit up.

"One trip. That's all I'm promising."

INTERLUDE

 _The Doctor closed the door behind him, loudly. This made the prisoner look up from where she was playing a piano. He never slammed doors, not unless he was feeling particularly emotional. She smiled coyly,_

" _Oh dear, the eyebrows are bushier than usual. I think I detect an emotion. What_ can _have happened?" she crooned._

" _You knew."_

" _Knew what?"_

" _You knew she was alive, you were the only one who could have known."_

" _I really don't know what you're talking about, dear." She rolled her eyes and began to play again._

" _Missy." She didn't say anything and began Beethoven's 9th Symphony. In anger, he shouted her name. Her real name. Her fingers stopped instantly and she whirled to face him. His face was set and hard and she knew that he was really, properly angry._

" _That," she said softly, "Is not something I have heard in a very long time."_

" _It was you. Don't deny it, you opened the watch. No one but a Time Lord could have even recognized it. And it wasn't me who opened it." He took a step closer, "Do you deny it? Because if you lie to me, I will use your name again and this time I won't be so kind."_

" _Oh do tell me what you'll-"_

" _Was it you or wasn't it?!" He bellowed. Missy sighed deeply then,_

" _Yes! Yes it was, I went to the house where she ended up. But I wasn't going to open it. I was just going to...well I honestly don't remember what I was going to do with it but the damn man shot it out of my hand and well after that…"_

" _After that you what?!"_

" _After that I...I left. I couldn't - she just looked exactly how I...well then I left and went to burn a few cities, didn't I?" Missy grinned cheekily, "It's a little fuzzy, but burning cities was decidedly part of that."_

" _Why didn't she remember me immediately? Why didn't I know- you kept me from knowing, blocked me from her somehow-"_

" _Or perhaps you're just angry because you forgot her." His eyes blazed,_

" _Don't you dare-"_

" _Oh but you feel guilty, don't you? Because you did. You forgot your own daughter. You forgot all of your children. There aren't anymore left, by the by. I looked._ I _looked, and you did_ nothing. _It always was your favorite tactic, running away."_

" _Shut up."_

" _And even now, you still aren't looking for her."_

" _I said-"_

" _Oh so you're still running away? Is that it?"_

" _Missy-"_

" _Get off your arse and find her. Don't you coming raging to me. I might have broken the watch and scrambled her mind but_ you _are the one who abandoned her. You knew that they were still out there, but you couldn't handle it. They always worshiped you, and you couldn't bear to let them down, could you? Well you've got one child left, Doctor, and so this is your last chance!" The Doctor looked ready to strike her for a few moments, then he turned, hesitating before the door._

" _She'll hate me." He said softly. Afraid._

" _Probably. But when has that ever stopped you from trying to patch it up, Doctor? After all, I've tried to kill you all our lives and here you are. Now go."_


	24. Chapter 24

A VOICE IN THE WIND

Ashton sat across from Arthur Whittaker, looking at him intently even though the boy couldn't look back at him.

"Well. I think this is the first meeting you've asked your mother to schedule as opposed to her dragging you here," he said, slightly amused.

"Probably because this is the first time I actually need help. I've been blind for nearly ten years, why does she still think I'm not over that?"

"Probably because she's not over it, but her projection of her feelings onto you can be a topic for another day. Now. Tell me about why you wanted to come?" He'd been Arthur's therapist for a year. The boy had been to several others but really disliked them. He appreciated Ashton because he refrained from pitying him.

"Well... I need some advice. About girls."

Ashton laughed, "Girls? Am I speaking to the same Arthur who swore all girls his age were flighty and silly?"

"I've got a friend. I met her at the park since there's nothing else for me to do there except sit. We started talking, then she'd meet me there all the time. We see each other at least twice a week. Well, "see." Her name is Karmen."

"Hmm. Interesting. And you enjoy talking to her?"

"Yes. She's funny, and she knows a lot about rocks. And birds. She brings me things she finds sometimes, like buttons or coins. I had heard her voice but she never let me touch her. Then a few days ago she let me read her face because I was starting to think maybe she wasn't real. But then she started crying so I think I did something wrong."

"Well...why didn't you think she was real?"

"Sometimes people would come by and talk to me or something and she wouldn't ever say anything. And the person talking wouldn't ever acknowledge that she was there. I guess she's just shy, she'd never stick around when my mum came by to pick me up and she wouldn't answer a lot of questions about herself. It's almost like...well I guess I don't mind too much."

"Almost like what?"

"Almost like...like she's there when it's just me and her. But as soon as someone else sees her she disappears. Or turns invisible." Ashton looked up sharply. Why did that sound familiar?

"That's curious that you would describe it that way."

"Well I don't know how else to describe it."

"No, not saying it was a bad way to describe it. Just...curious."

"Do you think she _is_ a figment of my imagination?"

"I'm not sure. You're not delusional, but perhaps lonely?"

"She's not made up!" He said fiercely.

"I never said she was. But…"

"No! No she isn't made up, I know she isn't!" Arthur doubted his own words but didn't want anyone but him to speculate that his only friend in the world was nothing more than a delusion.

"Alright, calm down please, Arthur I didn't mean to imply that-"

"Imply? You might as well have called me mad!"

"No, I didn't, but you said that-"

"Never mind what I said! I'm leaving!" He stormed to the door, fumbled with the handle, and slammed it behind him. Ashton half considered reminding him that his mother wouldn't be back until the end of the session and he'd be sitting there until then but refrained. Sammy always told him he was too much of a smartarse. He sighed. It would be easy to dismiss it as a lonely boy who desperately wanted a friend but…

 _Almost like when someone else sees her...she disappears. Or turns invisible._

Ashton saw two more clients that day then took the tube home. Sammy was already there, sitting at the table sketching. She paused, sipping tea from her mug and then said without turning,

"I don't understand any of these. I keep drawing them but they're never what I mean to have happen." The majority of the pictures were in outer space, amid exploding stars and strange planets not of their solar system. He looked at one that depicted a stone angel with her hands over her face. Another Sammy had inked in and it was truly amazing. In the center of a swirling space-scape was an enormous red and orange bird with brilliantly huge plumage in the heart of an explosion of golden light coming from a shattered watch at the base of the picture.

"It's beautiful, I don't see what the problem is."

"The problem is, I don't know what it means!"

"Well then make something up! Give it a meaning, modern art and all that." There was a knock on the front door. Ashton went to answer. A tall, thin old man with bushy eyebrows and a strange tool in his hand stood ominously on the doorstep and as soon as Ashton opened it he said,

"I was wondering if you could help me." He began waving a wand-like contraption with a blue light around as Ashton tried to back up.

"Uh yes?"

"I'm looking for someone, I believe you know her."

"Um- maybe- sorry, could you maybe stop-" he warded off the wand. The man clicked a button on it and looked down.

"Yes. Yes you should by these readings." Sammy came to the door. The wand buzzed. The man's eyes widened, "Oh my yes you really should. Alright, when did you last see her?"

"See...who?"

"See her, where is she? She dropped you off, I assume. She was with you - TARDIS hasn't been able to pick up any signals-"

"Who are you?" Ashton asked bewildered.

"That's not important, what is important is finding her I can't imagine you know too many time travelers, it shouldn't be that hard to answer!" Sammy backed up a few steps.

"Uh...sir, I'm sorry but I really have no idea what you'

"It's you!" Sammy shrieked, pointing a shaking finger at the man. Both men looked at her.

"Yes? It's me? Have we met before?" He squinted.

"You- you're the creature in the box! The one I see in my dreams….different faces, but always the same creature!" Sammy gripped the door frame for support.

"You know who I am?"

"Y-yes." She took a shaky breath. Broken images of memory began to come back to her.

"Sorry, but I don't and I don't like how upset you're making my wife!" Ashton interjected.

"Have you seen her in your dreams, do you know where she is?" He asked urgently.

"Who?" But Sammy already knew.

"My daughter, the Phoenix. Please, I need to find her."


	25. Chapter 25

TIME ITSELF

"So all these buttons, I was right! They do steer this thing!" Raj laughed and skipped around as Phoenix began booting up all the systems.

"They do a lot more than steer! And don't touch anything! I'll have to teach you to do it properly!" She slapped his hand away from the console.

"Where are we going?"

"Anywhere you want. Anywhen you want." She smiled.

"Oooo, then can we go to the end of the universe?"

"That's...a bit far don't you think?"

"What? I want to see what happens since I'll be dead," Raj shrugged.

"For all you know, it could be tomorrow."

"Is it?" His eyes widened. Phoenix laughed.

"No. And we aren't going to the end of the universe. But we could go to a planet where there's giant moths, so big you can ride them! There's these enormous caves, and if you stand on the edge of the entrance you can jump off onto the back of one of those moths as it flies out!" They both thought this sounded like a good idea. "Hold on, Raj!" The TARDIS revved to life and Raj staggered to keep its balance as it went flying into the time vortex. "Whoa! She's eager to get going!" The engine whirred faster and faster, everything was spinning, "TARDIS, slow down! The stabilizers aren't all the way up we've got to- oh no, no!" She looked closer at the screen.

"What is it?"

"She's going too fast! She didn't let all the systems reboot, we're not stabilized!" Lights flashed, WARNING, APPROACHING PLANET. Phoenix hammered uselessly at the buttons, Raj tried flipping levers, the large red planet got closer and closer on the monitor screen but soon became obscured as they picked up so much speed white fire flew around them faster and faster-

Phoenix screamed and felt Raj grab her hand, holding onto the console, braced for the crash-

 _Thud._

Phoenix was pretty sure she'd lost all senses. She tried to open her eyes but either it was pitch black or she hadn't opened her eyes at all. She tried to feel for Raj but her fingers wouldn't move. Come to think of it, she couldn't feel her fingers. There was no sound, not even the sound of her own hearts beating or her breath.

Then a pinprick of light. It grew larger and larger until everything became a blank white space. Slowly, she sat up. Pleased at discovering she could sit up and could look down and see her hands and feet, she stood up and looked around. Nothing. Just a blank space. No sign of Raj either. She opened her mouth to call for him but before any sound left her mouth she blinked and found herself back in the TARDIS.

Everything was still. Sparks in the air from the console hung suspended, the lid on the box of photographs was half off, two pictures hanging inches from the ground. She noticed with a start that she was looking at herself a few feet away, holding onto Raj. Neither of them moved. Or even appeared to breathe. She didn't really have time to wonder what was going on because she heard a clacking noise behind her.

Sitting on a stool a few feet away was a woman Phoenix had never seen before but seemed oddly familiar. In front of her she had an old fashioned loom, and the tapestry on it flowed to the floor and then continued to spread out until it looked as if it covered the whole floor. Or as if it made up the whole floor. She looked down and saw that she was standing on the tapestry but couldn't feel it beneath her feet. The woman was selecting a new thread from the multitude of colorful strands surrounding her.

"Hello?"

She looked up serenely. "Hello, my child." Looking at her, Phoenix could distinctly see her but at the same time she couldn't at all. Sometimes her skin was dark, sometimes it was pale, sometimes it was smooth, sometimes marked with age. Her hair floated around her like a gentle ocean wave, but its consistency and color never quite stayed the same. Phoenix thought she could see glimpses of galaxies and shimmers of stars caught in it. She wore a simple gown of white, belted at the waist with a long golden chain which fell down to her knees. An hourglass hung at the end.

"Where am I? Am I in the TARDIS?"

"That's a bit of a difficult answer. You're everywhere. And nowhere." Her voice even was impossible to place an age and range.

"Who are you?" Phoenix watched, mesmerized as her hands moved back and forth deftly over her work.

"I am Time."

"You're...what?" she tore her eyes away from the weaving and looked at the lady. Their eyes met. They were gold. Phoenix had to look away after a mere moment. There was something terrible in them.

"I am Time."

"But time, it's a…"

"A concept? An idea? A thing?" she finished.

"Yes."

"Oh no, my child. Time is so much more. You of all creatures should know. A Time Lord, though I always thought that was laughable. As if anyone could claim to be lord over me. It has been a long while since anyone saw me like this. I'm too vast to be looked at all at once. I drive men mad, kill them most of the time." She continued weaving. A thread caught. She tugged at it and sighed, "It's this one again. Your father's thread. It always finds a way to tangle up my design and goes about snapping other threads."

"Where's my thread?" Phoenix asked, surveying the tapestry. Time plucked at a golden thread. It intertwined with her father's blue one once, several rows back.

"If you went along the tapestry a ways, you'd find it overlaps many more times."

"Where does it end?" She saw part of it sitting in Time's lap.

"That would be telling." Without warning, a tear appeared in the tapestry several feet away from Time's hands. She hastily pulled it to her lap and grabbed the four unraveling threads, quickly tying them off before they could make a hole, "Happens sometimes." Phoenix watched for a few more seconds then asked,

"So I'm here, but I'm also there?" She pointed to her frozen self.

"So many questions," Time smiled, "And yes. You are defying logic, and are indeed two places at once."

"Can he see us?" She asked, nodding at Raj.

"Yes. But not like you do."

"What do you mean?"

"Your TARDIS flew into me."

"But...we always do that."

"No, you always fly _through_ me. Not into me. That's much more dangerous. I'm going to drive you mad if you don't stop. And I will kill him." She sighed.

"Don't do that! I'm sorry! I'm sorry I flew into you!"

"I wouldn't do it on purpose, my child. But neither can I stop it. It just simply is the way of things, I'm not good or bad. I just am." She tied off several threads and began with some new ones. Phoenix was momentarily distracted trying to see some kind of pattern in the design. It didn't look very orderly, it seemed to tangled and knotted.

"How...how do I stop it?"

"Well you'd need someone to come along and give you a good shove out of the way. And there's only one other TARDIS who could do that." Phoenix felt like a hand was twisting her stomach into a knot. "You snapped the connection between your threads last time you met. You'd have to tie them back together." She held out the two threads. Phoenix noticed another one, a purple one, which was rapidly shrinking in Time's lap.

"What's that one?"

"Ah. That is his," she looked at Raj, "It wasn't supposed to end yet…You must make up your mind, Phoenix."

"This is going to hurt, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Alright." Phoenix bit her lip and nodded. She grasped all three threads.

Immediately, wind rushed in her ears, colors flashing- she could see Raj on his knees, hands over his ears, a woman who might've been his mother, but no- that wasn't Raj that was Rose, Rose Tyler- no it was Amelia Pond- Donna Noble- the Doctor Donna- River- then she saw Sammy, Ashton, she could hear Jesse's voice-

Then there He was. All of him. All of his faces, standing in a line in front of her right inside her TARDIS. All twelve faces looked around wildly, as if searching. The wind rushed faster, she could feel heat from somewhere.

"Phoenix," they all called, "Where are you?"

"I'm here! Can't you see me?"

"Phoenix! Child- please tell me where you are!"

"I'm here, I'm-" she caught her breath then called, "Papa!" All twelve pairs of eyes looked at her, directly at her. "Papa, I'm here!" She tried to run to him, but she couldn't move. She squinted against the bright light, she didn't know where it was coming from, "Help! Help us!" Phoenix grasped his hand for a moment, it slid from her grasp, their fingertips separating-

He called her Name.

The final piece. The only thing she couldn't remember. And when she heard it, she knew it was hers. Really and truly hers.

The threads were slipping, she was falling down, through the tapestry. She hung over space by those three threads, she could see her TARDIS below spinning out of control. She looped the threads through her hand, slipped down until only her fingers remained in the knot. An inch more and it would be tied.

Then the Phoenix fell, arms outstretched into the embrace of the stars.


	26. Chapter 26

THE FINAL PIECE

"Phoenix? Phoenix? Wake up!"

Ow. Her head hurt a lot. Someone was shaking her...Raj? Her eyes fluttered open. Raj's worried face was blurry at first but her vision cleared a moment later. He helped her sit up.

"What happened? Where...where is -"

"I don't know, everything got hot and I couldn't see and then there was a crash and I thought we had hit the planet…" She let Raj babble on for a bit as she tried to recall what had happened. Time...Lady Time...and

 _Papa._

Phoenix stood up and nearly toppled over but managed to stumble to the console.

"Phoenix what are you doing?" She did not reply. She found the grooves of the right panel and pulled it off, revealing the fleshiness beneath. Raj made a noise of surprise. "What is that?"

"Brains." Her friend looked at her as if concerned for her sanity. Which really was pointless because he'd been with her long enough to know that she had very little of it. Phoenix placed her hand on the TARDIS' brain and closed her eyes.

 ** _But what if you get lost papa?_**

 ** _See this? It's the TARDIS' brain. If I connect to it, I can show her where to go just by thinking it. So all I have to do is think of you, my little firebird. And I'll be able to find my way home._**

She screwed her eyes shut and thought hard.

 _Take me to him….find him. Find him._

The TARDIS revved to life, a little more slowly this time. For a second she could almost hear the TARDIS in her head, as if she was saying "Finally." When they thudded to a halt she knew they'd landed in the right place. She didn't look at the monitor screens. She couldn't.

"Phoenix where are we?"

She took a deep breath, "I came to find my father."

"Oh. Why?"

"Because I'm ready now."

"This is the one who hurt you?"

"Yes."

"How did you know he is here?"

"It's a battlefield," she said simply.

"You will forgive him then?"

"I don't know. It's all very confusing. I don't know, I'm still all mixed up inside but I can't sort it all myself anymore."

"I know."

"Will you come with me?"

"Of course," he took her hand and they walked out the door side by side.

They'd landed six feet away from the Blue Box, right in front of it. Phoenix hesitated on the threshold. There he was. His back was to her, he stood six feet from his own TARDIS, looking over the destruction. It had been a town once. Now there was just rubble.

Raj gave her a gentle push.

She tried to find her voice, "Papa," he didn't turn look at her but she continued, "Papa, I'm here." He still said nothing. She stood next to him, unable to look up. Phoenix took his hand and she felt him shudder, repressing a sob.

"I always end up here," he said quietly, "On a battlefield. Empty because I'm always the only one left."

"I am here this time." He shuddered again, hands trembling and gripping hers tighter. "I am here this time, Papa."

"No, no, have to…" he stumbled away, pulling his hand away from hers, "Can't stop, keep going, Doctor." Phoenix jogged to catch up.

"You called my name! You know my name, you saved us, me and Raj, you have to stop! It's me, the Phoenix, it's me!" She grabbed his sleeve and tugged petulantly.

"No!" he pulled away again.

A frown creasing her brow, Phoenix stopped and resolutely planted herself.

"I lived a whole life! A whole life not knowing who I was, or why I was living it! I'm not going to live another one without answers! I ran away, just like you, but I'm NOT you and I'm done running!" She was shouting now, as he kept stumbling away, "You can't run anymore! Mama said you'd never stop but I'm telling you now! Stop!"

He wasn't slowing. Phoenix felt desperation rising in her, what else could she say?

" _ **Why does no one know your name, Papa? Everyone just calls you Doctor. That isn't your name."**_

" _ **You see, my name is cleverer than all the other names. It's so clever no one understands it. Not at all."**_

" _ **No one?"**_

" _ **Well, sometimes if little girls listen very carefully, if they are thinking just the right things, they can understand it."**_

 _I'm listening now._

And she knew it. And she spoke it. It seemed to quiver through the air and shift the ground slightly.

He froze. Phoenix marched up to him over the uneven, shelled ground.

"I'm the Phoenix. Your daughter, child of Gallifrey, the last person in time and space who can understand your name. I've been loved hard with thick love that I don't understand and- and- I'm lost, I'm really, really lost-" her voice was knotted up all of a sudden, her eyes swimming and then he was there, holding her close, hugging her tight.

Then she whispered in his ear three simple words that shook the foundation of the wise old man. A soldier brought to his knees by a child. No, not _I Love You._ Something far more terrible, far more powerful, far harder for an undeserving man to hear.

 _I Forgive You._

Raj watched the old man and the girl walk the pitted battlefield. Two other figures joined him near the door of the colorful box. The young woman walked around it, admiring the patterns.

"There's a few more animals than the last time I saw it. Looks like she added a unicorn," she commented, then turned to Raj, "I'm Sammy."

"I know. She talked about you a lot. And you are Ashton."

"I still don't understand how we forgot…" Ashton trailed off.

"I didn't forget, really," Sammy said quietly, "And I don't think you did either. But sometimes our brains make things up, when we need to cope with something we just can't understand."

"Yeah you would say some intellectual crap like that," Ashton said lovingly and put an arm around her. "So who are you, then?"

"Raj," he smiled, "I am her companion."

"So were we, I think. It's a little slow coming back."

"What do you suppose they're talking about?" Sammy wondered.

"They will have many things to say," Raj shrugged, "It is the way with these things. Maybe one day she will tell us. Who knows."

"You like her, don't you?" Sammy said softly.

"Like her? Oh no, I love her. It is foolish, I know."

"I don't think it's so foolish."

"Ah, but it is. Loving such a girl. It is like loving the stars." Sammy didn't reply.

"They'll be a while," Ashton interjected, "Why don't we get comfortable?" They filed into Phoenix's TARDIS. Raj sat down on the threshold.

He'd wait for her.


	27. did you miss me?

**Hello all!**

 **I have been on hiatus for a while (as you probably noticed) and while this story is nearly complete I still do have a few more chapters that will be forthcoming! Stay tuned!**


	28. Chapter 27

WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

They walked for a long time, hours. Phoenix still couldn't quite believe it, they were here. Together. She wondered how long it would last. She let him tell stories for a while, that always made him feel better and she liked to listen. Then she began her tale, starting with the vague memories she had of being Jane Smith. He hung onto her every word, never interrupting. Finally, she got to the part with Lady Time.

"Do you think she really was?" Phoenix asked.

"Really was what?"

"Time. Is Time really a lady with a body and everything? Time is all...funny. And strange. I wasn't sure if it was real except…"

"Except what?"

"Well, then she said Raj's thread was running out and I had to tie our threads back together to mend the tear. And when I did...I could see you. All of you, all your faces. And you were calling my name. My real name. So called to you and you heard me. At least I think you did." They kept walking. He seemed to be thinking hard.

"It does sound very...impossible."

"But did you hear me?"

"I suppose I've seen many impossible things," he mused, "Time is an odd thing, but that's just it. It's a thing, it's a complex idea and can't be rational. Time Lords know almost everything about Time, and nowhere in the archives that I can recall did anyone ever see Time as a person…"

"Time said it was silly for anyone to claim to be lord over her." The Doctor chuckled. "But you didn't answer my question, Papa. Did you hear me?"

He still said nothing. The silence answered for him. They continued on a ways before Phoenix tried another question.

"It's all gone, isn't it?" she asked."Gallifrey. You sent me away because you were going to destroy it all."

He knelt down to be at her level, "I did. But I made it right."

"What?"

"I found a way around it. A loophole. I always do."

Phoenix stared at him, "But then...why didn't you go back home?" It was a silly question. Papa never stayed anywhere for too long, but she had never known why. He'd made up excuses of course but they were all lies.

"I never really belonged on Gallifrey," he said slowly, "And there's nothing left for me there now. Of course I missed it terribly once it was gone. It's funny how that happens."

"So you won't go back with me?"

"No."

"Well, then I guess I won't go back either." She scuffed the ground with her shoe.

"Why not?"

"Because, like you said. There's nothing left for me there. Unless you managed to save Mama and the others when you fixed it," she looked at him hopefully. He shook his head. They'd died well before that day.

"Where will you go?" he asked, hand still resting on her shoulder.

"Here, there. Wherever the TARDIS takes me. I've already got some good practice at that."

"I hoped to show you the universe myself."

"That would have been nice. You should have a companion."

"Couldn't you come with me, just for a little while?"

She shook her head, then hugged him. He understood, she could tell. They made their way back to the TARDIS. Raj was patiently waiting in the control room, chatting with Sammy and Ashton. They all turned to look at the pair walking in. The TARDIS beeped happily.

"Are you all uh…" Ashton wasn't sure what to say exactly.

"Papa and I are going to see each other again. Soon."

"I want to thank you," he said to Ashton and Sammy, "For helping me."

"Thank you for helping us remember," Sammy replied.

"And you, young man," he turned to Raj, "Make sure she doesn't forget to eat. And ice cream does not count as a meal. Look after her."

"She is not needing me to look after her, sir," Raj smiled.

"I always need someone to look after me. And she's my daughter and so takes after me in many ways." He knelt down in front of Phoenix. "I will see you again soon? Do you promise?" She nodded. "Good. Run fast, because you'll need to. And always, always remember to be kind." He kissed her forehead, fluffed her hair and stepped back outside. The TARDIS closed her doors.

Phoenix smiled then practically leaped at Ashton and Sammy, hugging them tightly.

"I missed you!"

"Whoa! We missed you too," Ashton grinned.

"You already met Raj, that's good! Raj, these are the friends I told you about! Where shall we go first? Raj and I were on our way to Dunbar's moon where they have the giant moths but we kinda got off track."

"Uh...actually Phoenix, Sammy and I, we were sorta hoping you could take us home."

"What?"

"Well," Sammy said, "We're married now, and we have lives and we're so grateful to you because without you we would have never met or had all those adventures but now…"

"Oh," Phoenix looked rather put out, "Alright. I can take you home." She pushed several buttons and grabbed a lever. They landed back in London, in the middle of Trafalgar Square.

"You could come for a visit!" Sammy suggested.

"No, not today. I have a few things to take care of, like a check list. Very grown up. I'm feeling very grown up now for some reason. But I will come visit soon!" Sammy wrote down the address for her. Phoenix hugged them both and then watched them walk out through the crowd, hand in hand looking for the nearest tube station.

"What does 'soon' mean for a time traveler?" Raj asked her.

"Oh I suppose it means whenever our threads cross again," Phoenix sighed, not taking her eyes from them. Raj didn't know what she meant at all. "I have a few more people I think you should meet, Raj. Who knows, maybe they'll want to come with us!"


	29. Chapter 29

BEGIN ANEW

Phoenix found her in the park. She was seated under a tree, wings folded. She looked a bit more worn out, and two of her fingers were crumbling but as she froze when Phoenix looked at her, she could see there was a smile on her face. A boy was holding her hand.

"Whoa...it really is stone," he was saying as Phoenix drew closer. She stopped a few paces away and closed her eyes and whispered for Raj to do the same.

"Hello, Karmen." She couldn't see her expression but she could hear the gasp of surprise.

"Finally! Finally you came back!" Less than a second later, Phoenix felt herself wrapped in a crushing hug. Raj must've peeked because the embrace turned to stone.

"You mean...you didn't forget me?" She said quietly.

"Of course I didn't forget you! How could I do that? Why did you leave me, Phoenix? That was very mean, I was stuck here. But I met Arthur, so that was nice. I can hold his hand, Phoenix!"

"Really? That is interesting!" she said with something of her old childish curiosity, "That's fascinating! How?" she looked over Karmen's still-petrified shoulder and noticed Arthur's cane, "Ohhh, I understand! Really, that is interesting!" Raj must've closed his eyes again because she pulled away. "I am sorry, Karmen. I...was being silly. And it was very rude me of to leave you here. I've learned some things, I can tell you all about them if you like. And the you can tell me what you learned. Arthur can come, if he wants." She opened her eyes. Karmen was standing next to Arthur.

"Yes. I think I would like that very much."

Sometimes stories are too hard to retell. It isn't that the events are complicated or that it is hard to recall, but it is impossible to convey what it meant. Those moments where in relatively unextraordinary circumstances, threads weave together something so beautiful and important it changes you, opens your eyes. But then telling it to another, it loses the magic because that moment was not for them. It was for you. Phoenix discovered this as she recounted meeting her father. She couldn't convey how it felt, what it meant, but found she didn't need to.

Karmen's story made her smile, and Arthur's wonderment as he ran his hands over every surface in the TARDIS made her laugh.

"I know maybe you won't want to," she said to her angel friend, "But maybe we could take a trip?"

"I'd like that."

They were together for a time. Phoenix couldn't say exactly how long, she lost track of how time worked outside the TARDIS. But after a while, Karmen was ready to leave the TARDIS. She wasn't so afraid of what she was anymore, it's harder to be afraid when you have someone around whom you can be completely yourself. Like Sammy and Ashton, Arthur and Karmen asked them to visit.

"I'll just be here in the park, and Arthur only lives a few streets away!"

"Come back when I'm older so I can go live on a different planet," Arthur grinned. Phoenix promised, but felt a slight pang as the doors closed. Was this what he meant? Being on a battlefield where you're the only one left? She glanced back at Raj, who was adjusting a lever on the console. He'd gotten good at steering the box.

"Where to now?" he asked.

"One last place," she said.

Jesse knew it wasn't good. Muriel's face told him as much. He didn't feel alarmed, however. He just took her hand and gave her a smile.

She began shakily, "The doctor said -"

"No, don't tell me what they said. Don't tell me how much time they say I have left. Let's just you and me spend every second of it together, eh?" He smiled. Muriel nodded and wiped her eyes.

They decided to get out of the city for a while to the coast. They were too old to go walking along the cliffs, but they enjoyed watching the children on holiday running around on the beach below their small cabin. He read aloud to Muriel in the afternoons and then they would lie in bed after dinner listening to the waves crash below them. Jesse was content, but kept feeling as if there was something missing, something he had forgotten to do. He'd made sure Muriel would be taken care of after he left, he didn't want her to keep working in that bakery unless she wanted to. That was really all that mattered to him...but still this thing nagging at a corner of his mind.

On the day before their return to London, Jesse had Muriel push his wheelchair outside so he could sit in the sun while she left to go to town. He closed his eyes, sighing contentedly. He could hear someone walking his way, feet shuffling through the grass. Then a young voice said,

"Hello Jesse."

He opened his eyes, blinked, a little dazzled. The speaker was a girl maybe ten or eleven, with bright red hair wearing a white blouse with a peter-pan collar and a neat blue skirt. A boy stood a few paces behind her, limping a little.

"Well, hello young lady, young man."

"Are you on holiday? I couldn't find you in London, but the TARDIS said you were here. She was right, of course."

"The what?"

"The TARDIS, Jesse. Don't you remember?" She suddenly looked anxious.

"Oh...that sounds familiar. Can't possibly remember why. Who might you be? You seem to know who I am but…" He squinted at her.

"It's me. It's Phoenix. This is Raj, you haven't met him yet."

Jesse stared at her for what felt like a long time. Phoenix felt tears coming to her eyes. He didn't know...he didn't recognize her. "It's Phoenix. Remember? We met at a train station, you came to my TARDIS and we traveled! We met Karmen and Sammy and…I found my family, Jesse. I found them, you were so worried about me not having any but I found my father and - and I just wanted you to know that." Her voice shook. Jesse continued to stare at her, bemused. "That's all. I just wanted you to know...I'll go now." Raj took her hand as she turned away. They didn't go more than a few steps when Jesse called,

"It was a bus station, not a train station." Phoenix turned back. Jesse was smiling. "It's you, innit? The little girl in my dreams. Who takes me such marvelous places, through time and space in that funny box. I knew...I knew I was forgetting something. I wanted to say goodbye to you, I needed to...say goodbye." Phoenix crouched next to his chair. "Yes, that was it. Goodbye and...and I wanted to tell you to remember to grow up. To move along. Lots of young folks jump from one thing to the next, but not you. So, remember to grow up, my dear."

"You could come with me," Phoenix said, "With us."

"No, little one. You can't avoid endings forever."

"But...but you could! Turning back time is what I'm good at!" But she knew it was no use. Jesse was so human that way, courageously resigned to whatever lay ahead, no running. She hugged him tight.

"Don't look so sad, Phoenix. Besides," he smiled, "I'm far too old to try to keep up with you whippersnappers." Phoenix dug around in her pockets (which oddly seemed larger than they should be) and pressed something into his hand.

"Alright. I won't forget to grow up."

Jesse watched them walk down the cliff towards a large rock that hadn't been on the beach before then looked down at the thing in his hand. It was a watch, the face shattered, hinge mangled beyond repaired, hands frozen.


	30. Chapter 30

**So, after weeks (months) of avoiding it, here is the final chapter! I've spent a long time with these characters so it's a little sad to end their story but better to end it than to leave it on incomplete forever. Thanks to anyone who actually made it through the whole fic!**

THE PHOENIX RISING

"Are you alright Phoenix?" Raj asked, sitting down next to her.

"I...I don't know. It's funny, but I think I am." She ran her hand along the TARDIS wall.

"You know, I'm going to stay with you for as long as I can," Raj said, moving closer.

"I'm glad you will, Raj," she looked a little pained as she said it, as if she didn't really believe him.

"I promise! As long as I can!"

"Are you sure?"

"Of course!"

"Why?"

He thought about it for a few minutes, "Well I think it's because I love you."

"Oh. Really?"

"Yes. Is that strange?"

"No, not so strange. I think I do too. But I'm not so sure I really know what that means. I think I've just started to understand that love is even bigger and more complicated than Time. And I don't understand Time at all, so what do I know about love?" Raj shrugged.

"I don't know. Want to find out together?"

"Yes," she took his hand, "We can find out together. And who knows, maybe one day we'll come close to figuring it out. But first…" she looked apprehensive, "I have to do something before we can. And if you change your mind, that's alright."

"You seem scared," he said.

"I am. But it's got to be done, I promised Jesse I'd grow up and so I'll have to do it." She backed up a few steps, "I'm not sure I can stop it now, it's started."

"What has?" Raj looked alarmed at the look of pain that crossed her face. She took a sharp intake of breath and nearly doubled over. "Phoenix!"

"No! Get away!"

"Phoenix what-"

Golden fire erupted all around her.

 _It hurt, it always did. It burned as it coursed through her, changing her. She could feel the past being burned off of her, the wounds being cauterized. Things fell apart, but came back together, new pieces in a new order. Everything inside her being turned inside out, nothing would be the way is was before and she knew it. But this time, she didn't think it would be so bad to start over._

She looked down at herself. All of her clothes felt too tight. She reached up a hand and grasped her hair. She saw with satisfaction that it was still ginger and longer. When she looked at Raj she realized she was just slightly taller than him. She turned to see her reflection in the TARDIS console. She looked older. Not terribly much, physically. But she knew that she wasn't a child anymore. She noticed a tattoo curling up her left arm, in a pattern of flames, ending with a magnificent phoenix bird on the shoulder. She didn't remember trying to add that.

"How did you-?" he asked, amazed.

"I'm the Phoenix. And I've finally risen." His face split with a grin.

"Yes. Yes it is you. I see."

"Will you stay with me, then? There's so many adventures we haven't been on yet, you know."

He crossed his arms, "You'd get into terrible trouble without me. Well, where to first?"


End file.
